Financial Post Magazine – Financial Posthttp://business.financialpost.com
Canada Business News | Financial Updates & InformationMon, 16 Oct 2017 21:58:22 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://financialpostcom.files.wordpress.com/2017/09/financialpost-38x250.pngFinancial Posthttp://business.financialpost.comCanada Business News | Financial Updates & InformationCalgary on the Hudson: Revamped Edwardian Bay building is Calgary’s newest place to be seenhttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/calgary-on-the-hudson-revamped-edwardian-bay-building-is-calgarys-newest-place-to-be-seen
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/calgary-on-the-hudson-revamped-edwardian-bay-building-is-calgarys-newest-place-to-be-seen#respondFri, 13 Oct 2017 11:15:31 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=1431968]]>Even in hard-up Calgary, where the oil shock has hammered the restaurant and entertainment scene particularly hard, the renewal of the historic Bay building downtown by Toronto-based Oliver & Bonacini Restaurants has received the warmest western welcome. In its first expansion outside southern Ontario, the restaurant and event company took over a significant part of the main floor, basement and top floor of a century-old retail landmark to launch a stunning new eatery (The Guild) with a bar and patio that spills under the portico onto the busy Stephen Avenue Mall, a cocktail lounge (Sub Rosa) and, most recently, a venue for big gatherings called The Hudson. Meanwhile, the department store has shrunk its footprint and retreated into the remaining space.

The changes are all part of a broad partnership between Oliver & Bonacini and the Bay that started in 2012 with the establishment of a restaurant, in-house bakery and event space at the retailer’s Toronto Queen Street store. Plans are being discussed for other prime Bay locations across the country, too. The Calgary project, with its Mounties-inspired art, rustic leather furniture and hardwood floors, is a tribute to Western Canada and the Hudson’s Bay Co. as one of the country’s nation builders, says Andrew Oliver, Oliver & Bonacini’s CEO, president and major shareholder. “We wanted to let you know that you are in one of the great cities in Canada and we wanted the design to reflect that,” he says.

The project was hatched long before oil prices tanked. But rather than pulling the plug, Oliver & Bonacini — which employs roughly 2,000 people and generates about $100 million in annual sales — discovered that doing business in Alberta during an oil downturn has its upside. Eager to diversify the economy, “the government there and the city are really pro-business, which is very nice to see,” Oliver says.

A 1920 photo of the Hudson’s Bay Co. building in downtown Calgary.

Indeed, Oliver & Bonacini significantly increased the Calgary project halfway through construction after realizing that even though the oil and gas business was in retreat, a lot of business was still being done, people were still getting married and conferences were still being organized. On top of that, Albertans still had one of Canada’s highest per capital disposable incomes, and they “worked hard and played harder,” he says. Yet the city was short of large-scale event space.

The restaurant and lounge, which have been open for a year, have had steady traffic from both the downtown office crowd and tourists. The Hudson, which opened in May and can accommodate up to 700 people, is preparing for a busy fall season of Christmas parties, corporate events, charity galas and weddings. Already, there are bookings well into next year.

A big draw at both the restaurant and the Hudson is the Canadian cuisine on offer, Oliver says. From poutine to caribou, Alberta beef to devilled eggs, a lot of the ingredients are sourced from local farmers and cattlemen. All meats are aged in-house. “The culinary scene across the country and, in particular, Alberta is unbelievable,” he says. “There are amazingly talented chefs doing amazing things. And we are just happy to be part of it.”

The Calgary project ended up costing about $20 million, more than originally planned, and much of the overrun was related to the renovation of the Edwardian building. On the top floor, which at one point housed the Bay’s cafeteria, the only reminder of the bygone era is an old escalator that was kept to provide an emergency exit.

Repurposing historic buildings is worth the extra cost and effort because clients love their character, artisanship and craftsmanship, Oliver says. In addition, it’s not easy to find such large spaces and a landlord such as the Bay that is prepared to do a long-term deal. “You couldn’t build these historic buildings today,” he says. “As long as Calgarians can continue to support us as much as they have, we will evolve and do our best to hit the nail on the head on what makes sense now, but we are there for the long run. Our deal with HBC is for 20 years; we definitely went in and doubled down knowing that 20 years is a long time.” FPM

Many Canadian investors are unhappy with their investment portfolio returns. Generational lows in interest rates combined with the Canadian resource-heavy market being one of the world’s worst performers during the past five years has made it challenging to produce the necessary returns to fund people’s current consumption patterns and expected retirement lifestyles.

But adversity is the mother of invention. Investors’ demand for yield and return has created a plethora of alternative investments that, generally speaking, are typically called exempt market securities and do not have a prospectus like stocks and bonds do. These alternative investments run the gamut from a single mortgage investment or an investment fund of mortgages to private real estate, private equity and hedge funds. Many exempt market securities are sold to investors as having less or even no market risk, but there are, of course, real risks that investors should consider.

First and foremost, not every investor can invest in exempt market products. The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) has rules that attempt to qualify only those investors who can bear the financial consequences of investments that go south. The most frequently used conditions to meet this accredited investor status are: financial assets (net of debt) of more than $1 million; income over $200,000 in the past two years or $300,000 when combined with a spouse; and a net worth topping $5 million (including real estate). Attaining these numbers may indicate that an investor is wealthier than average, but they don’t consider someone’s investing sophistication or their experience with complex and sometimes opaque legal and fee structures. In many cases, it is difficult to qualify and quantify what the true risks are for making an investment in an exempt market product versus something somewhat easier such as buying bonds or equity mutual funds.

In Canada, the majority of investors deal with investment advisers (formerly known as stock brokers) who recommend investments based upon the suitability standard. This means that the adviser needs to follow “Know Your Client” and “Know Your Product” rules and make recommendations that consider an investor’s net income, net worth, investment objectives and risk tolerance. Many investors think their adviser makes recommendations that are the best for the client, but other factors can come into play, such as the commission paid by the investment fund manager or the adviser’s firm. Quality of the exempt market investment plays a part, of course, but these considerations are sometimes overridden by the commissions or, in some cases, trailing fees paid to the adviser. Exempt market dealers in many, but not all cases, operate based upon the suitability standard.

An investor fortunate enough to hire an outsourced chief investment officer or family office that is registered as a portfolio manager enters into a fiduciary relationship where the interests of the client must come first. Clients pay the firm directly and the portfolio manager accepts no other forms of compensation. While seemingly innocuous, acting as a fiduciary poses significantly more challenges than following the suitability standard. Investors should look for firms that have extensive experience in performing due diligence on a variety of asset classes and whose professionals hold credentials such as chartered financial analyst, MBA, chartered alternative investment analyst or even chartered business valuator.

There are a number of basic questions investors should have when beginning to perform due diligence on an exempt market investment. For example, what is the liquidity of the investment? Depending on the asset class and structure of the investment fund, lockups may range from 30 days to 10 years and beyond. A related question is when do investors get their capital back? Is the fund reported on Fundserv (which operates as a back office that allows banks and dealers to price the reported fund on a frequent basis) or through a private limited partnership structure that could be registered in Canada, the United States or an offshore jurisdiction such as the Cayman Islands? In addition, investors should find out what and how the fees are calculated, how much capital the fund’s managers or general partners have placed into it, and what the secondary market is, just in case they need to downsize their position.

These questions are just the tip of the iceberg with regards to performing due diligence, and don’t address issues such as fraud by the investment fund or an adviser directing client monies to a firm owned or controlled by the adviser. Previously rare, the number of investors hurt by fraud will likely only grow given the proliferation of exempt market investments over the past five years.

Micheline Blais always wanted to work in the movie business when she was a little girl growing up in Sudbury, Ont., a mid-sized city about a five-hour drive north of Toronto. “My parents said, ‘You need to get a trade first,’” she recalls. “They didn’t understand that there are trades in the film industry.” Nevertheless, Blais followed her parents’ wishes, graduating with a nursing degree and becoming a psychiatric nurse. Her career in medicine took her to Victoria and then back home to Sudbury, where she won contracts with Laurentian University’s Northern Ontario School of Medicine.

But the film business buzz never left so when fellow Sudbury native David Anselmo leased the city’s decommissioned Barrydowne Arena five years ago and turned it into a film studio, Blais knocked on the door. He hired her, part time, as a casting director, and her film career abruptly caught fire. “I had to quit the medical school contracts because the business grew really fast,” Blais says.

If Toronto is Hollywood North, then perhaps Sudbury can lay claim to being Hollywood Way North. The Big Nickel, home to what remains of the world’s largest integrated mining site, seems on the surface an unlikely spot to shoot movies. But Sudbury these days is smoking hot, crawling with both Canadian and U.S. film and TV crews. The city says movie making has brought in $75 million in direct spending during the past five years.

“Who would have thought a local Sudbury boy would be making films with Ethan Hawke and Brooke Shields?” asks Anselmo, who is 41. He graduated from Laurentian University, but “there were no opportunities in film” then. He built a career in Italy and South Korea before Northern Ontario Heritage Fund Corp. incentives lured him home. Ontario’s heritage fund provides a conditional grant of up to 50% of eligible costs up to $500,000, based on a production’s spending on hiring, for example, film crews who live in northern Ontario.

Since returning, Anselmo’s Northern Ontario Film Studios has provided services such as trailers and hair and makeup trucks for close to 100 movies in Sudbury as well as North Bay, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay, which he calls the region’s “film belt.” His Hideaway Pictures makes all its films in the belt; last year, Hideaway signed a deal for close to $100 million to make movies for Hallmark Channel.

One of those Hallmark movies, Angel Falls, is being shot this fall in North Bay, whose main street has often stood in for small-town America. “I am very blessed to live in my home town and make movies in Northern Ontario,” Anselmo says. He estimates that more than 300 people in Northern Ontario now make a living full time in the film business.

Perhaps the most famous production in Sudbury, at least for Canadians, is the hit CraveTV comedy series Letterkenny — named for a fictional town in Northern Ontario, and now shooting its fourth season. In a sign of the spinoffs of success, the city’s Stack Brewing recently launched a real-life version of Puppers Premium Lager, “the official beer of Letterkenny.”

Behind the scenes on the set of Letterkenny, producers Jacob Tierney and Mark Montefiore watch as a scene is filmed in Sudbury, Ont.

Sudbury often stands in for a lot of places, including California, but the city can pose challenges. For Born to Be Blue, a film featuring Ethan Hawke set in the 1950s, Blais had to recruit 500 extras. There is no shortage of people — the city has a population of 165,000 — but she had to find the right ones. “They wanted a New York population,” she says. “We have a small diverse population, but we’re not as diverse as Toronto.” Nonetheless, she found the needed extras.

Northern Ontario has also benefited from a problem Toronto has: a lack of available studios for film and television production. “Toronto doesn’t have enough space,” notes Paul Bronfman, the owner of William F. White International, an equipment supplier to the film business. “We at Whites and Pinewood (Studios) are running around the GTA trying to find warehouses that are available for short-term rentals.” Whites has now opened a facility in Anselmo’s studio in Sudbury, which Bronfman called a profitable investment.

Sudbury boasts plenty of space. The Northern Ontario Film Studios’ web site mentions another detail that is music to the ears of harried southern Canadian filmmakers: ample parking. “That’s the beauty of Northern Ontario,” says Anselmo, who keeps a boat on Lake Wanapitei on the northeastern edge of the city. “A lot more room to shoot, a lot more room to park, a lot more room to play.” And, for people like Micheline Blais, a lot more childhood dreams coming true. FPM

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/hollywood-way-north-luring-filmmakers-with-a-precious-commodity-space/feed0fp10110-gs-sudbury-northspecialfp15 minutes plus: Pharmasave Ontario is in promotion mode, but its chief usually isn’thttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/15-minutes-plus-pharmasave-ontario-is-in-promotion-mode-but-its-chief-usually-isnt
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/15-minutes-plus-pharmasave-ontario-is-in-promotion-mode-but-its-chief-usually-isnt#respondThu, 12 Oct 2017 11:05:37 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=1430836]]>Just about every father thinks he’s a master of the grill. Few are ever challenged to prove it. Even fewer become internationally known as the BBQ Dad on both web and traditional media. But Doug Sherman, Pharmasave Ontario’s CEO, has become just that with very little effort and with almost no experience in the art of self-promotion. “I’m kind of like [New England Patriots coach] Bill Belichick when it comes to social media: I call it SnapFace, I’m not on Facebook, I don’t follow people,” says the 19-year leader of the drug store co-op, which is in the midst of a massive expansion. “But we had a lot of fun with it within my family and, obviously, within the Pharmasave family.”

Doug Sherman and his daughter Amy on Breakfast Television. Sherman is the CEO of PharmaSave Ontario and now has high-profile Internet following as BBQ Dad.

It was Sherman’s daughter Amy who inadvertently got the whole thing started when she posted a picture of her dad standing in front of the family barbecue, filled with grilling chicken and vegetables, to the website of her Toronto-based healthy meal delivery service called The Little Honey Bee. The picture was then copied into a Craigslist ad by some 20-somethings in Spokane, Wash., looking for a “generic father figure” to attend a Father’s Day celebration. Among the expected duties: “grilling hamburgers and hotdogs (whilst drinking beer),” and referring to “all attendees as ‘Big Guy,’ ‘Chief’, ‘Sport,’ ‘Champ,’ etc. (whilst drinking beer).”

It didn’t take long for the ad to go viral and Sherman found out just how much when the assistant greenskeeper at his golf course told him he was blowing up on the internet. The Today Show, CBC and City-TV’s Breakfast Television picked up the story; Sherman and Amy even got to barbecue on City-TV studio building’s rooftop with host Dina Pugliese. They also got to plug Pharmasave and Honeybee a few times to boot. “I don’t need the notoriety myself. I’ve got a lot going on. But I thought, How can I help my older daughter, Amy?” he says. “My owners have gotten a kick out of it, too, actually.”

So much so that Sherman was the BBQ Dad at a community barbecue in Bowmanville, Ont. this summer at the local Pharmasave owner’s request. At another community event, a life-sized cutout of him was on display. And he reprised his role on the grill at the annual Pharmasave owners’ retreat on Muskoka’s Lake Rosseau in late September.

Oddly, Sherman’s role as head of Pharmasave Ontario is more behind the scenes, one that doesn’t require him to be on social media or in promotion mode. He understands the power of the web — after all, both of his daughters operate online concerns (his youngest lives in London and runs the Hungry Londoner Instagram page, which posts restaurant reviews and photos), but says the individual Pharmasave owners are the ones who should have a community presence, both online and on the street. “My job is to lead the team of employees who provide the support to our small business owners,” he says. “The focus is not us, it’s on the 300-plus Pharmasave store owners and their teams and their communities across the province.”

There will soon be a few more owners, too. Pharmasave is in the midst of a pretty heady expansion strategy and wants to add 100 stores in the next five years, not bad given that the chain launched in Ontario in 1997 with just 17 stores. Nationwide, Pharmasave, which was founded in 1981 in British Columbia, has more then 600 stores in nine provinces, so roughly half its business is now in Ontario. Sherman says the chain’s growth is built on knowing its customers, rather than trying to be all things to all people as the big-box retailers are having success doing. “We’re like the Cheers of pharmacy,” he says, referring to the fictional place where everybody knows your name. “Our owners have typically either been born in the community in which they’re operating, or they’ve moved there, or they live within a kilometre of their store.”

Regardless of the technological advancements being made in both the pharmaceutical and retail industries, Sherman says Canadians inherently like to support people who live and work within their communities and buying medicine, diapers and the like is still a relationship-based undertaking. “We have stores that have been in their communities 50, 60, 70 years and, in one community, 150 years since 1865,” he says. “People like to be recognized.”

That said, giant brands such as Shoppers Drug Mart, Rexall and Jean Coutu are doing just fine in the name recognition game, but Sherman says Pharmasave provides a grassroots alternative and will continue to expand as long as there are entrepreneurial-minded pharmacists coming out of the universities or who decide along the way they want to own their own business. Of course, the one thing the industry has in its favour, he says, is that Canada has an aging population and those who are younger are taking greater care than ever to keep from being sick later on.

As for his time in the spotlight, Sherman is glad it’s finally dying down. “It certainly isn’t going to be part of our 2018 branding strategy,” he says. “There’s a lot going on at Pharmasave, which is what I get paid for.” FPM

Auto exec Linda Hasenfratz provides a strong voice on NAFTA

Linda Hasenfratz isn’t worried when U.S. President Donald Trump tweets or makes an off-the-cuff comment about ripping up the North American Free Trade Agreement. “It’s a negotiation. I don’t think you should ever be surprised by things your opponents may or may not say and do,” says the CEO of Guelph, Ont.-based auto-parts maker Linamar Corp. “Everyone’s going to have a different perspective and strategy on how to approach it. We need to focus on facts, not speculate on what they may or may not do, and try to come up with the best agreement for Canada.”

As one of the 13 members of the council advising the Canadian government on what to do with NAFTA, Hasenfratz, 50, is a crucial voice for the auto industry amid renegotiations that have put the sector on centre stage. Hasenfratz took over as the head of Linamar in 2002 after working at the company for 12 years in a wide range of positions, working her way up from machine operator to general manager of the manufacturing divisions. Under her tenure, the company’s sales have grown to $6 billion from $800 million, with 23 straight quarters of double-digit operating earnings growth. Linamar has emerged as a global player in the auto-parts industry, with 59 plants scattered around the world and 24,500 employees.

Linamar is also among the many companies integrated in a system where auto parts are said to cross NAFTA borders seven times before a vehicle is ready for sale. Major changes to that system could cause major disruptions. Through the early stages of renegotiations, questions have been raised about possible changes to rules of origin, in particular, the U.S.’s desire to have an American content requirement that could prove contentious.
But Hasenfratz remains unfazed. The best approach in her eyes is to finish the renegotiations quickly, modernize the deal without negatively affecting the economy, and actually improve the North American auto industry’s position in the global marketplace. “We have an opportunity here to take advantage of a huge market that’s outside of North America,” she says, pointing out that 80% of automotive sales are outside the continent.

But NAFTA isn’t the only file Hasenfratz is influencing. She met Trump in February during a meeting at the White House between the president, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and several women business leaders on the newly formed Canada-United States Council for Advancement of Women Entrepreneurs and Business Leaders. Since the meeting, the council has been working on a series of recommendations covering a range of topics, including how to improve access to capital for female entrepreneurs — an issue that has always been important to Hasenfratz.

“I want to do as much as I can to encourage other women to do the same, to start a business, be entrepreneurs and have the very rewarding experience that I have had,” she says. “It’s also important for our country, our economy and our continent, for that matter. If we tap into a broader section of our workforce to start businesses and scale them up, we have that much more of an economic growth engine, which is fantastic for everybody.”

Hasenfratz becomes noticeably more animated when the conversation switches from politics to her company’s prospects in an industry being disrupted by technological innovations. “There’s so much going on in the industry, whether it be in terms of propulsion of vehicles, moving platforms from internal combustion to hybrid and electric, and other things shaping our future,” she says. “We just see it as a huge opportunity for us to grow our business.”
One area Hasenfratz sees as key to Linamar’s growth is the trend toward outsourcing production. Automakers have produced about 70% of their content in-house on average, but as they look to invest in new areas, they are turning to suppliers such as Linamar for production. Looking decades ahead, the company is also making sure it has a foot in the autonomous driving market, incorporating vehicle-to-vehicle communication capabilities to existing systems. “It’s an exciting time for us at Linamar,” she says. “It’s sure been a busy few months, but things are going great on all fronts.” By Alicja Siekierska

Networker Sunil Sharma is helping startups go global

Sunil Sharma once had a successful career as a diplomat working for the Canadian foreign service on industry-related files, helping the Canadian Space Agency, the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and others link up with businesses. But a mid-2000s stint running the Canadian consulate in San Diego, Calif., took his life in a different direction when he was bitten by the startup bug.

“I started to really see the growth of the tech industry and the spirit of how these entrepreneurs are really embracing and creating change,” he says. “I felt very inspired by that.”

A decade later, Sharma is playing a prominent role in helping the tech industry heat up in Canada. In mid-August, he was named the inaugural managing director of Techstars Toronto, a new arm of the internationally renowned startup accelerator based in Boulder, Colo. Techstars’ expansion into Canada is part of a trend of major corporations, venture capitalists and various levels of government pouring money into the local tech industry.

Accelerators, incubators and research hubs that have recently received significant amounts of funding include the University of Toronto’s Vector Institute for artificial intelligence research, Uber Technologies Inc.’s Toronto lab for research into self-driving cars and Montreal’s Element AI, an incubator and research lab. Sharma says he’s already received hundreds of applications from startups hoping to snag one of 10 spots in the Techstars’ first cohort in January. And he’s using his diplomatic training to think beyond this country’s borders, hoping to convince the best young companies in the world to set up shop in Toronto by making the accelerator a designated entity for Canada’s Startup Visa program.

“I was trained as a foreign affairs person to be a globalist,” he says. “Startups have to be global. By internationalizing them at the earliest stage when they’re just startups is very powerful, because they start thinking as international companies before it is normally the time.”

After heading the Canadian consulate in San Diego, Sharma worked as international director of the Canadian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association before launching his own accelerator, Extreme Startups, in 2011. He developed a reputation as a great networker, connecting founders with mentors and sources of capital. John Stokes, a partner at Montreal-based venture-capital firm Real Ventures, says Sharma was very good at talking up startups to potential
investors like him, while simultaneously managing expectations. “He struck the right balance between being the entrepreneur’s champion without being the entrepreneur’s cheerleader,” he says.

Sharma says he has long admired Techstars, which is widely considered one of the world’s top accelerator programs alongside San Francisco’s Y Combinator, and modelled Extreme Startups after the accelerator, which puts young companies through a rigorous three-month program culminating in a “demo day” where founders present their ideas to investors.

About a year ago, when Techstars was in the early stages of its plan to expand into Toronto, Sharma met the accelerator’s co-CEO David Brown for dinner in Boulder. Brown says he was impressed by Sharma’s connections. “He seemed to know everybody in the ecosystem,” he says. “One of his great qualities is that he has his finger on the pulse of what’s going on.” Those contacts are something Sharma’s looking forward to expanding around the world. “Having a good network of contacts and relationships is very helpful to these companies.” By Claire Brownell

Ian Anderson is getting it done despite opposition

Ian Anderson, president of Kinder Morgan Canada Inc., was having a good day in late August. The National Energy Board had just notified his company that it had cleared all conditions to start expanding its Westridge Marine Terminal in Burnaby, B.C. — a promising sign that his proposed $7.4-billion Trans Mountain pipeline expansion was on track to break ground. But, all told, Anderson has been having a good year. His company, a subsidiary of Houston-based Kinder Morgan Inc., pulled off a $1.7-billion IPO, shipper support for the pipeline expansion from Alberta to Burnaby remains steadfast, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — though not exactly an industry fan — isn’t having second thoughts about giving Trans Mountain a conditional permit, despite facing politically problematic opposition in many quarters of British Columbia.

For the 59-year-old accountant originally from Winnipeg, receiving the NEB’s thumbs-up on that August day marked a significant step forward after a six-year-plus battle to nearly triple the size of Kinder Morgan’s 1,147-kilometre conduit from Alberta to the B.C. coast. For much of that time, Anderson was in the centre of a nasty debate, concentrated in B.C., over whether the oilsands industry should be allowed to grow by building export pipelines that would increase tanker traffic, threaten climate change commitments and cross the traditional lands of many worried Indigenous communities. The debate, he says, “became bigger than me, and bigger than just our company.”

Anderson recognized he had to do business differently. Unlike many corporate leaders, who run for the hills rather than engage their critics, Anderson accepts that controversy is the new normal in the energy business and requires a new roadmap. “What we have tried to do is demonstrate that by facing up to the issues, by acknowledging that different points of view exist, by trying to reconcile differences as best we can, and really rely on facts and science as much as possible, we can blaze a path that will be successful that others can look to, perhaps contributing to an evolution of the industry,” he says.

For example, Anderson set out to appeal to as many constituencies as possible (from Indigenous leaders to municipalities); he reshaped his job to be more external facing (approximately half his time is dedicated to dealing with government, authorities and the public); and he became more reliant on an expanded team. It’s a roadmap others in the resource industries would be wise to follow given the rising opposition to new projects. Making the case for Trans Mountain “has been a windy road, and around each corner there has been different hurdles, barriers and obstacles as the industry, as the regulators, as the public views and perceptions evolved,” he says. “We have had to be very flexible and adaptive to changes that have come our way, and I think that’s been a measure of our success.”
Though massive protests are still expected during the pipeline’s construction, Anderson is ready for whatever comes. “The time has passed where we can solely look to and rely upon established regulatory proceedings to get us through project completions,” he says. “Freedom of speech and the right to lawful protest is embedded within our country’s values and we’ll adhere to that as well.” By Claudia Cattaneo

CMHC Evan Siddall is making more with less

Few business models are built on losing market share, but no one is complaining about what the CEO of Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. has done with the nation’s largest mortgage default insurance provider. The success of Evan Siddall, who was brought in to run CMHC at the end of 2013, seems to be at least partially defined by the fact he keeps shrinking the Crown corporation’s business and, by extension, the government of Canada’s overall exposure to the housing market.

CMHC was bumping up against its government-imposed limit of $600 billion in backed mortgages when Siddall arrived. By the second quarter of 2017, its total insurance-in-force was $496 billion. In 2015, Siddall said CMHC was holding 50 per cent of new residential insured mortgages and planned to hold steady at that market share. Dominion Bond Rating Service Inc. estimates CMHC in 2016 controlled about 54% of the residential market in the single-family residential market. Genworth Financial Mortgage Insurance Co. Canada had 32% and Canada Guaranty Mortgage Insurance Co. had 14%. CMHC, by some estimates, had controlled as much as 75% of the market in recent years. Consumers with less than 20 per cent down on a home must get mortgage default insurance to protect the banks in case the loan goes bad. Ottawa backs 100% of CMHC insured loans and 90% of the loans backed by its two private-sector competitors.

The shrinking strategy seems to be working and CMHC has boasted about how much money it makes for the federal government via its government insurance program. In the second quarter of 2017, the Crown corporation paid Ottawa a $240-million dividend from profits. It also declared in June a special $4-billion dividend to the federal government, because it determined that it simply had more capital than it needed to cover its loans.

The influence of Siddall and CMHC, which advises Ottawa on housing, may not always be easy to pinpoint, but it’s hard to miss the reality that it is a market leader everyone else looks to. When it raises premiums for mortgage insurance — for example, in January, it instituted the third major increase in four years — competitors quickly follow. “CMHC has direct and irrefutable influence on the financing of mortgages in the country,” says Brian Johnston, chief operating officer of Mattamy Homes and a former CMHC board member.

It’s also worth noting Siddall’s speeches seem to neatly fit changes in government-enforced regulations. For example, in December 2015, Ottawa moved to increase the minimum down payment to 10% on the portion of house prices above $500,000. “Politicians are tempted to help first-time homebuyers enter the market, but low down payments may be part of the problem adding to affordability pressures and macro-economic vulnerabilities,” Siddall remarked to a Bank of England audience, shortly afterwards.

Phil Soper, CEO of Royal LePage Real Estate Services, says Siddall stands out as “someone who is willing to say what he thinks is right even if it’s politically charged,” and noted CMHC’s leader came out against taxing foreign buyers. “He’s more of a classic business leader. And whether he has the title or not, he’s treating his role like the minister of housing almost,” he says. “He’s focused on doing the right thing for Canadians related to housing on a broad basis that goes beyond mortgage insurance.” By Garry Marr

Oilman Scott Saxberg challenges industry conventions

To find someone who appreciates Crescent Point Energy Corp. CEO and president Scott Saxberg’s candid and outspoken views, look no further than Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall. “They’re the major player in our energy sector,” he says. “They’re the only one that says we support Saskatchewan’s position. I think it’s bolstered our position.”

Wall has led a relatively lonely fight against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to mandate a nationwide carbon tax. Other premiers have supported the plan, but Wall has consistently said it’s not appropriate in Saskatchewan and would breach the division of powers between Ottawa and the provinces. Saxberg, who leads the largest energy producer in Saskatchewan, has been among the few to lend his support, even breaking with the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers’ stance on the issue. “Every province has its own approach to this and every province is unique,” Saxberg says. “To put a blanket approach to the entire country doesn’t make any sense to us.”

Wall credits Saxberg for having the courage and “clarity of thought” to take up what may not be seen as a popular opinion elsewhere. “For me, if I’m advocating and the major association isn’t saying the same thing, it’s sure nice when the No. 1 player in our province and a major player makes the point,” he says.

Saxberg’s support of Saskatchewan’s stance on climate policy isn’t the only thing he’s outspoken on. He’s also been blunt in his willingness to discuss the pressures facing the energy sector in Canada and how it’s losing its competitive edge against the U.S. “I applaud his willingness to step into the ring,” says Gary Leach, president of the Explorers and Producers Association of Canada. “Canada has a lot of corporate executives who are rather colourless, but I think Scott has distinguished himself by being willing to express views on policy issues and government issues.”

Saxberg has also blasted other Canadian governments for imposing additional rules on oil and gas producers while their competitors in the U.S. don’t face the same additional regulations. “Ten years ago, there was no competition for energy. We didn’t have to do a lot of things to compete with the U.S.,” Saxberg says. Back then, capital flowed to Canada’s oilsands and energy sector, but that was before the advent of shale oil and gas exploration. “That has all turned upside down and now we’re competing with energy in Texas that is in the local market and that is very cheap. Now, Canada has to do something different and that is to compete with the U.S. directly on energy. Any time we delay pipeline projects, we are subsidizing the U.S.”

Crescent Point, which operates in Alberta, Saskatchewan, North Dakota and Utah, is not immune to those types of market pressures. As a result, Saxberg says his company is reallocating capital to Utah since returns there exceed what’s available in Canada. “For Canada to progress and grow and succeed,” he says, “we need to be competitive.” By Geoffrey Morgan

Canada Goose’s Dani Reiss is a Canadian brand champion

Iconic Canadian apparel brands are few and far between when it comes to having any kind of sway beyond these borders. Maybe Roots, maybe Lululemon, at some point. But one company has turned that most Canadian item of clothing — the parka — into a fashion must-have even in places that have absolutely no need for a $1,000 warm coat in winter, let alone any other time. Canada Goose, of course, is that brand and Dani Reiss knows his company has a rare opportunity to be a worldwide retail leader. “We take our inspiration from the country that is home,” says the CEO of Canada Goose Holdings Inc. “The same things the world loves about Canada — our resiliency and pioneering spirit, the warmth of our people and our desire to make the world a better place — are our shared values within Canada Goose.”
Reiss feels the responsibility of being a flag bearer for Canadian companies, not just in retail, but all industries. Though he says he welcomes it, he admits there are ever increasing temptations as Canada Goose becomes more successful. “We have to keep trusting ourselves and our intuition and not deviate from what makes us successful,” he says. “Our focus and our commitment is to remain just as disciplined as when we were a small company that nobody had heard of.”

Indeed, it’s only been in the past decade that Canada Goose has become embedded in the consumer consciousness. The company was started as Metro Sportswear Ltd. by Sam Tick, an immigrant, in a small Toronto warehouse in 1957. His eventual son-in-law, David Reiss, in the 1970s came up with the label Snow Goose, which morphed into Canada Goose by the time David’s son, Dani, took over in 2001. Since then, the company has been in active growth mode, with Bain Capital LLC taking a majority stake in 2013 to fuel expansion, and a $340-million IPO in March has kept the coffers full. Today, the company has more than 2,000 employees, annual revenue of $403.8 million and a market cap of $2.4 billion. Oh, and its stock has risen 33% from its $17 IPO price.

That Reiss is the architect of Canada Goose’s success is perhaps all the more surprising given that he didn’t follow any tried-and-true formula — hell, he didn’t even go to business school — and he admits he wasn’t always a “brand guy.” He once cut the alligators off his Lacoste shirts. “I used to think brands were just labels,” he says, “but I learned, though, through my early years at Canada Goose, that real brands do exist. I believe that people crave authenticity. They want to buy real things, things they can believe in, and the stories behind them.”

No surprise, however, that with success comes imitation. From a distance, there are plenty of other jackets that look like a Canada Goose one, even down to mimicking the distinctive patch on the arm sleeve. Reiss wishes them the best, but points out that anyone who says imitation is the sincerest form of flattery has never had to deal with counterfeits. “It’s not just about protecting IP for Canadian companies like ours — although that is extremely important — it’s about protecting the health and welfare of every Canadian,” he says.

The key for Canada Goose now, Reiss says, is to maintain the company’s position in products — it recently introduced a knitwear collection, its first non-outerwear collection — and thought leadership — part art, part science. “What I’ve learned over the years is that as Canadians, we spend too much time imagining failure, instead of imagining success,” he says. “We’re so focused on what could go wrong, and on the downside, that we often miss out on opportunities.” Spoken like a true ambassador. By Andy Holloway

OSC Enforcer Jeff Kehoe is getting tough on crime

Comparing the Ontario Securities Commission to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission usually isn’t favourable to Canada’s largest securities regulator when it comes to case volume, punishment or process speed. The comparison isn’t entirely fair. After all, the two regulators operate under different legal frameworks, procedures and jurisdictions. Moreover, the comparison may be becoming irrelevant as the OSC over the past five years has been rebuilding its enforcement tool kit. It also has a new director of enforcement, Jeff Kehoe, a veteran lawyer — and amateur stunt pilot — with a deep background in market regulation, criminal prosecution and, as an added bonus, the private sector.

Kehoe’s skill set is unique and it’s the kind of mix that will be required in his demanding position, says Howard Wetston, chair of the regulator between 2010 and 2015 who, with former enforcement director Tom Atkinson, initiated many of the OSC’s new enforcement programs. “Modern financial systems rely on confidence to function properly,” Wetston says. “Investors need to know that securities regulators and regulations are in place to protect them and that the regulations will be enforced when broken.” The task of leading that effort, he adds, requires a spectrum of qualities: a good grounding in law, a nose for prosecutorial discretion and case selection, solid managerial skills and a deep understanding of the markets and its participants.

With Kehoe’s appointment in October 2016, the OSC has identified just such an individual. His enthusiasm for aerial acrobatics leaves no doubt about his nerve. His résumé proves the pedigree. Kehoe began his career as an assistant Crown attorney with the Ontario Ministry of Justice, where he worked on high-profile cases such as the 1994 Just Desserts murder in Toronto. That was followed by four years as senior litigation counsel for Justice Canada, where he gained international experience. In 2001, he joined the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (then known as the Investment Dealers Association of Canada) as director of enforcement litigation and as vice-president of enforcement. In addition to his regulatory experience, Kehoe also spent time in the private sector, working as general counsel for Difference Capital, the investment firm founded in 2012 by Henry Kneis and Michael Wekerle, who is perhaps best known — beyond Bay Street, at least — for his starring role on CBC’s Dragons’ Den.

In announcing Kehoe’s appointment, OSC chair Maureen Jensen — a former colleague at IIROC — specifically pointed to his range of experience in the decision to hire him. “He had quite a varied background, he’d also spent a little bit of time in the industry,” Jensen said. “All the way around he really understands the area we work in.” Kehoe cites that diversity when talking about his role. “When you look at the background, it works really well,” he says. “It really is a good fit.” He’s also enthusiastic about the challenges ahead, from strengthening international ties when investigating major crimes to leveraging the emerging power of analytics to detect misconduct. It will take time for the results of these initiatives to become fully transparent, but rest assured the markets will be watching. By Cooper Langford

Former CPPIB chief Mark Wiseman settling in at world’s largest asset manager

There are approximately 5.4 trillion reasons Mark Wiseman has enjoyed his time spearheading the investment strategy of BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, after spending five years at the top of Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. That’s the difference in the value of their respective assets under management, a startling amount given that CPPIB is one of the country’s largest asset managers and responsible for a big chunk of every Canadian’s retirement kitty. No wonder then that Wiseman is having a ball. “You can imagine that if you are an investor, being in an organization like BlackRock is like being a kid in a candy store,” he says. “We just have so much access to information, technology, data, research, people around the world, both inside the firm and externally, it really is just a chance to have the world at your fingertips.”

CPPIB had 70 people all in Toronto when Niagara Falls, Ont.-born Wiseman joined in 2005 as senior vice-president of Private Investments after stints at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, merchant bank Harrowston Inc. and law firm Sullivan & Cromwell. He became CEO and president in 2012 and as he was leaving in 2016, CPPIB was opening its eighth office and had 1,400 employees around the world. By comparison, BlackRock has 135 investment teams and about 13,000 employees across 30 countries.

But there’s more than just numbers separating the two money managers. For one thing, CPPIB is singularly focused on a single client — Canada Pension Plan — which allows it to think much more long term; BlackRock has a multitude of clients, each with a different risk appetite and different investing objective. CPPIB is also just an institutional investor while BlackRock additionally operates a massive retail investor business. “The retail side is a side of the business I’ve never been involved with before so there’s a lot of learning there,” Wiseman says, listing portfolio construction, distribution, raising capital and regulations as the big lessons.

BlackRock’s mandate is simply exponentially bigger as is Wiseman’s now. At BlackRock, he’s officially global head of Active Equities, chair of Alternative Investors — which covers private equity, hedge funds, real estate, infrastructure and private credit — and chair of the Global Investment Committee. What that means in practice is that he has a hand in just about everything the firm does. “Between those things, I’m in a position and have the experience where people seek my input and advice,” he says. “A fair amount of my investing style gets into it.”

But Wiseman sees his role as even bigger than that. Yes, he sits on the Advisory Council on Economic Growth, which advises Finance Minister Bill Morneau and serves on several non-profit boards, but he also has a lofty corporate goal: “Our job isn’t to transform BlackRock,” he says. “Our job is to change the entire way people invest.” Part of that involves investing in data and machine learning technologies, part of it involves making sure environmental, social and governance (ESG) concerns are integrated into all of BlackRock’s investment processes. At the heart of these changes is a desire to deliver high-quality products at a reasonable cost. That, Wiseman says, is no different for investing than it is for other industries, whether it’s consuming entertainment or buying groceries.

“If you’re going to buy groceries from Amazon, you don’t want a rotten tomato, you want a high-quality tomato and you want the convenience of it being delivered to your home and you want all of that at a lower cost than if you went to a grocery store,” he says. “The investment industry is going exactly the same way. One of the strategies we have been employing is to bring institutional-quality products and solutions to the retail investor.” As an example, he points to BlackRock’s Advantage Series, a quantitatively driven series of equity funds that were previously only available to institutional investors. “As a business leader, this is a fascinating set of challenges and opportunities.”

One thing that hasn’t changed is Wiseman’s travel schedule. As at CPPIB, Wiseman still travels the world — for example, Singapore, London and Zurich — but he also spends quite a bit of time in Canada despite being in New York Monday to Thursday. On one late September day he was interviewed from a taxi heading to La Guardia, where he was hopping a plane to Edmonton to give a speech at Alberta Investment Management Corp.’s annual conference. From there he flew to Toronto to introduce chief justice Beverly McLaughlin at her retirement fête (he was her law clerk many years ago), then back to New York for one day before returning to Toronto, where his wife and children still live, for the weekend. “As I tell Bill Morneau, I’m still a Canadian resident with all the costs and benefits of that,” Wiseman says, then laughs. “I’m working hard, but having a lot of fun.” By Andy Holloway

Power Players

Alain Bellemare: Bombardier Inc. CEO and mastermind of the company’s five-year turnaround plan, which, against all odds, seems to be coming around.

Marc Cohodes: Shortseller has legions of fans and just as many enemies, but you can’t deny the impact he has on companies and investors alike.

Drake: Musician, sure, but so much more: an entrepreneur who owns a record company, clothing line and music festival and is a brand unto himself.
Paul Desmarais Jr.: Power Financial Corp. chairman and co-chief executive officer rules a big chunk of the financial industry with his brother André.
Bruce Flatt: Brookfield Asset Management Corp. CEO: Is there anything important in this country that the company doesn’t have its finger in?

Chrystia Freeland: Canada’s NAFTA point person and Minister of Foreign Affairs, she has her hands full with Donald Trump’s war on Canadian business.

How we did it

Any Power List is bound to be a subjective exercise that is sure to generate controversy and criticism, unless it’s done solely by some sort of financial metric, thus excluding a large number of people who do not work for publicly traded companies. With that in mind, we asked Financial Post writers and editors who they think are the ones shaping business affairs across the country, as well as a select group of outside voices. We also deliberately excluded obvious candidates such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Finance Minister Bill Morneau, etc. We then took those names and cross-checked them with Infomart, a sister Postmedia Network Inc. company that has management and director databases, and Meltwater, which has an advanced media monitoring and analytics platform. We hope the resulting 25 individuals stir a little debate. We welcome your thoughts, painful though they might be, at:letters@financialpostmagazine.com

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/the-power-list-25-movers-and-shakers-were-buzzing-about/feed0the power list 2financialpoststaffFP500: The most authoritative ranking of Canadian business availablehttp://business.financialpost.com/features/fp500-the-premier-ranking-for-corporate-canada
http://business.financialpost.com/features/fp500-the-premier-ranking-for-corporate-canada#respondThu, 08 Jun 2017 12:27:34 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=767438]]>Who’s up and who’s down? All you want to know about Canada’s largest corporations is here — with a searchable data base]]>http://business.financialpost.com/features/fp500-the-premier-ranking-for-corporate-canada/feed0fp500-newfinancialpoststaffFood fight: Jeff York is growing the Farm Boy chain one chef-prepared meal at a timehttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/food-fight-jeff-york-is-growing-the-farm-boy-chain-one-apple-at-a-time
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/food-fight-jeff-york-is-growing-the-farm-boy-chain-one-apple-at-a-time#respondMon, 29 May 2017 16:00:50 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=743135]]>From the May 2017 issue of Financial Post Magazine

Walk into any Farm Boy location and it quickly becomes apparent that the Ottawa-based grocery chain has managed to do something very few Canadian retail chains have mastered: create a store shoppers want to visit, not have to visit. The staff seem genuinely friendly (they’re even trained to lead customers to products, not simply point at them). The robust produce assortment is arranged so meticulously it’s as though someone took a level to each cucumber and leek. A foodie could spend an hour entranced by the plentiful local offerings at the cheese counter alone.

Canadian industry is generally dominated by a handful of brands, and that’s especially true in the grocery business where the triad of Loblaw Cos. Ltd., Empire Co. Ltd. and Metro Inc. control a massive chunk of the market. Farm Boy co-CEO Jeff York knows that all too well, which is why he has no choice but to be innovative. As a relatively small — yet swiftly growing — grocery chain competing against giants, he says simply, “If we don’t innovate, we die.”

York’s strategy is successful enough that other grocers are keeping close tabs on Farm Boy’s growth. They’ll unabashedly compliment the strength of Farm Boy’s brand and its mastery of chef-prepared meals. More importantly, food lovers are waving the Farm Boy flag. The chain was voted Canada’s favourite grocer in a national consumer survey by research agency Field Agent Canada in 2015. Farm Boy doesn’t take the salad-in-aisle-one/swimwear-in-aisle-five approach — it’s focused on fresh food.

The high quality of its meals means Farm Boy can take market share away from restaurants, which is a much easier task, York says, than stealing it from other retailers that sell food. York worked at one such place for 20 years before joining Farm Boy. He was president and chief operating officer of Giant Tiger Stores Ltd., which has also ballooned from a small regional retailer in Ottawa to more than 200 discount stores in eight provinces today.

Giant Tiger’s growth prepared York well for the expansion he’s overseeing at Farm Boy, which has roughly tripled its number of stores since his arrival in 2009. Founded in 1981 as a single produce store in Cornwall, Ont., Farm Boy now has 23 stores and more than 3,000 employees across Ontario. The retailer has systematically expanded outside its home turf since 2012 under the leadership of York.

Farm Boy is also working to open roughly a dozen stores around the Greater Toronto Area and Golden Horseshoe region over the next few years. It seems counterintuitive, but York purposefully opens stores beside other places that sell food. That way, he says, customers can buy their fresh food at Farm Boy, then head elsewhere to pick up toilet paper and other non-food items it doesn’t sell. The tactic is working: York says Farm Boy’s best stores are the ones closest to another grocer. Now, he says, it’s an inconvenience for customers when Farm Boy isn’t near another grocery store. “They have to say, ‘Ugh, I’ve got to go all the way to Farm Boy.’ So we have to make it worth their while to come.”

But a trip to Farm Boy isn’t complete without checking out the fresh prepared meals. There are dozens of options for customers craving a dish that’s too involved to make at home or trying to avoid fast food (thanks, lingering holiday weight). The choices include everything from butter chicken to hearty minestrone soup, and all the kitchen meals are made from scratch with all-natural ingredients and no preservatives. “Farm Boy,” York says, “doesn’t make food out of a bucket.”

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/food-fight-jeff-york-is-growing-the-farm-boy-chain-one-apple-at-a-time/feed0fp0526-gs-farmboyspecialfpGene lottery: Why you might not leave as much money to your heirs as you hopehttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/gene-lottery-why-you-might-not-leave-as-much-money-to-your-heirs-as-you-hope
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/gene-lottery-why-you-might-not-leave-as-much-money-to-your-heirs-as-you-hope#respondMon, 29 May 2017 11:30:19 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=750189]]>This article appears in the May 2017 edition of the Financial Post Magazine. Visit the iTunes store to download the iPad edition of this month’s issue.

Shirtsleeves-to-shirtsleeves in three generations is a common enough saying around the world, but it’s a bit more involved than you might believe. The numbers play out as follows: there is a 70% chance that financial wealth does not transfer from one generation to the next, which also means that there is roughly a 90% chance that wealth does not transfer to the third generation and a 97% chance it does not make it to the fourth.

These figures seem depressing at the outset. Why is it so difficult to stay wealthy?

Let’s say that at the age of 20 you receive an inheritance from your grandfather in the amount of $10 million. Can’t complain about that. You approach your local bank and speak with an advisor who shows you the returns of various asset classes. But what stands out is the long-term return of U.S. (S&P 500) stocks at 10.6%. If you just compound the money at this rate over the next 50 years, you would have $1.5 billion to provide to your family’s next generation. Right? No. There are several things not accounted for.

For one thing, we used a straight-line annual return of 10.6%. But even if you averaged that rate over 50 years, some years would have been great, others much less so. Unfortunately, the variability of the return series significantly reduces the end net wealth. The variability of returns leads to what is called variance drain or volatility drag. Based on stock-market volatility over the past 20 years, the drag on a portfolio can average more than 1.5% per year. This reduces the future inheritance to $778 million. Still great, but roughly half the original figure.

But wait, the rate of inflation has averaged a little more than 3% over the past 50 years. Therefore, the real rate of return for stocks has been 6.1%. The value of your lifelong treasure based upon today’s buying power is only $193 million. Throw in advisor and investing fees, even those for low-cost exchange-traded funds, of let’s say 0.5% because you are a shrewd negotiator, and the inheritance is now $152 million. Finally, taxes — the legendary John Bogle, founder of the Vanguard Group has estimated taxes cost a typical investor 2% per year — and typical spending patterns of about 4% of your portfolio annually leave you with $10.5 million.

To fatten that amount up, you need to develop a portfolio strategy that maximizes return and minimizes risk. In other words, create a portfolio that reduces the volatility of your investment returns. This is what sophisticated institutional investors such as Canada Pension Plan Investment Board do in order to generate the necessary returns.

Secondly, although you cannot escape the saying attributed to Benjamin Franklin — “In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes” — you can pay close attention to asset location issues and employ vehicles such as TFSAs, RSPs and trusts as well as strategies like tax loss harvesting to minimize taxes paid.

A fee-only Chartered Financial Planner can make a significant difference in making an investment portfolio tax-efficient.
Reducing investment costs is also very important, but a successful investor is not penny-wise and pound-foolish. The key is to optimize, not minimize, total investment costs. In other words, allocate investment fees to asset classes and managers who have a chance to add value, while using low-cost strategies where the chance of outperformance is unlikely.

Most investors now know that 80% of active stock managers do not outperform their benchmark after fees. However, many don’t know that the top-performing alternative asset managers who specialize in investing vehicles such as private equity, real estate, private debt and select hedge funds, tend to outperform their peers by wide margins. Accessing these elite managers can be worth paying for.

Finally, most people who receive a large sum of money believe there will be no end to the wealth and so they splurge on a new car, travel or house. Rest assured there is no amount of money that cannot be decimated by excessive spending. Spending money wisely and reducing the portfolio withdrawal rate by 1% can increase your portfolio’s terminal value to $17.2 million — a substantial difference and a protection buffer for life’s unforeseen events.

There are, of course, other issues such as family dynamics, economic disruptions, market collapses and wars. Managing an investment portfolio in any environment is a difficult intellectual and psychological challenge for a family to face. It takes an understanding of how money actually compounds in the real world to achieve success and have the wealth pass to future generations.

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/gene-lottery-why-you-might-not-leave-as-much-money-to-your-heirs-as-you-hope/feed0inheritancespecialfpThe state of luxury housing: If $1 million buys you a DIY special then what is the new threshold?http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/the-state-of-luxury-housing-if-1-million-buys-you-a-diyers-special-then-what-is-the-new-threshold-for-luxe-living
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/the-state-of-luxury-housing-if-1-million-buys-you-a-diyers-special-then-what-is-the-new-threshold-for-luxe-living#respondWed, 10 May 2017 00:42:08 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=750266]]>This article appears in the May edition of the Financial Post Magazine. Visit the iTunes store to download the iPad edition of this month’s issue.

Once upon a time, not that long ago, a million-dollar home was really something. You could picture such a home in your mind’s eye: a brick-and-stone estate, tucked behind an iron fence in a glade of stately oak trees. An MG, racing green, sits in a semi-circular driveway in front. Out back spreads a pool, teahouse and game court. Inside, fireplaces stud the grand salon and the ballroom.

These days in Canada’s big cities, $1 million doesn’t buy much. The average price of any ground-level housing in the Greater Toronto Area is now seven figures. “Any little piece of shit’s going for a million dollars,” says Desmond Brown, a real estate agent in Toronto with Royal LePage. “I sold one (in the middle of town). No parking. The main floor is gutted. It needs a total reno on all three stories. We got $970,000.”

If a million-dollar home is no longer anything special, then what is? Real estate search portal Point2 Homes recently released a list of the most expensive homes for sale in Canada. Perhaps not surprisingly, six of the 10 highest-priced homes are in British Columbia, two are in Alberta and two are in Ontario. Topping the list is Chelster Hall, a sort of red brick turreted castle near the shore of Lake Ontario in Oakville. The hall can be yours for a cool $65 million.

Only the super rich could buy such a home. What about your garden-variety successful banker, lawyer or doctor? Clearly, they’ll have to spend a lot more than $1 million in a big Canadian city to get a house befitting their status.

Eva Blay-Silverberg, who stays abreast of the real estate market for Point Blank Communications, suggests looking at the question another way. In the Greater Toronto Area, she notes, 13,188 homes changed hands in the first two months of 2017. The top 1% of those transactions, or 137 properties, sold for an average of $3.25 million. Perhaps $3.25 million is the new luxury threshold.

Not so fast. June Sommers has been selling real estate in Toronto for 45 years. She now works with her son, Andrew, through Royal LePage. The other night, one of the Sommers’ clients put in a bid on a house on Cheritan Avenue in a nice residential neighbourhood. “It was listed for $2.195 million, and it sold for $3.298 million,” Sommers says, with some shock in her voice. “Cheritan is not in tony Rosedale or Moore Park or Forest Hill.” She thinks the buyers wildly overpaid. “My people might have gone $2.5 or $2.7 (million).”

Luxury is becoming geographical instead of a price point

This particular sale disproves the theory that $3.25 million is the new threshold of luxury, since the Cheritan house is, by some measures, a bit ordinary. It’s a nice house, a boxy brown brick affair in a row of similar-looking houses. Dark brown shutters on its upstairs windows have little moons cut into them. A big maple tree graces the front yard. Inside, the home is renovated, with a side hall plan, new bathrooms and a new kitchen. Even so, the house has a shared driveway, to a semi-detached garage. And if you look closely at those shutters, the paint is peeling a bit.

Barry Cohen has some thoughts on luxury homes. Cohen dropped out of university after just one year, and began to sell real estate. In the past decade, he has been named Re/Max’s top salesperson in Canada four times. He has also posted the two highest recorded sales in Toronto this year. Cohen points out that Toronto is growing, but Ontario is not releasing land north of the city to build houses, so “we have all these condos” going up. A downtown house, therefore, has become relatively scarce.

“Luxury is becoming geographical instead of a price point,” he says. Thus “your vision of that big mansion on a big lot, and 8,000 square feet of living space,” still exists, but only out of town. In the city centre, a luxury home “doesn’t physically look like luxury.” It seems luxury is in the eye of the beholder. “To me, luxury was size,” he says. “To my wife, luxury might be the quality of the finishes.”

Cohen sold a house in Toronto’s exclusive Rosedale enclave in March. This house had the trappings of luxury: “Travertine Floor with Decorative In-Laid Border, Expansive leaded Glass Pane Windows Offering Extraordinary Panoramic Ravine Views, White Oak Hardwood Floors & Dramatic Free-Floating Custom Designed Staircase.” That, he says, was luxury, but it cost $10 million. “You don’t get much for $3.25 million in the way of luxury.” The Cheritan address, he notes, “does look like a very common house,” but he’ll happily take you to a townhouse in Brampton (a suburb about 45 kilometres northwest of Toronto) that is “luxuriously finished.”

It turns out that in many Toronto and Vancouver neighbourhoods, just acquiring any kind of property ownership toehold in 2017 is a sign that you have arrived.

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/the-state-of-luxury-housing-if-1-million-buys-you-a-diyers-special-then-what-is-the-new-threshold-for-luxe-living/feed0luxury-housingPeter KuitenbrouwerMeet the banker, venture capitalist and eight others changing the way we think and workhttp://business.financialpost.com/features/fp-magazine-the-game-changers
http://business.financialpost.com/features/fp-magazine-the-game-changers#respondWed, 05 Apr 2017 17:20:39 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=749755]]>FP Magazine highlights a group of Canadians who are knowingly changing the way industry or society works. Call them innovators, call them mavericks, we call them game changers]]>http://business.financialpost.com/features/fp-magazine-the-game-changers/feed0fp0405-gs-fpmag-main-artfinancialpoststaffOttawa ready for its Hollywood North close-up as tight-knit film community thriveshttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/ottawa-ready-for-its-hollywood-north-close-up-as-tight-knit-film-community-thrives
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/ottawa-ready-for-its-hollywood-north-close-up-as-tight-knit-film-community-thrives#respondMon, 19 Dec 2016 20:30:04 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=711628]]>It’s quite likely that Ottawa will never be able to compete with Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver and their big-budget movie productions. But a feature film, shot this year in the nation’s capital and surrounding area, could put the city on Hollywood’s radar as a viable, alternative movie-making site.

I Am The Pretty Thing That Lives In The House, which premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival, is a horror film directed by Osgood Perkins, the eldest son of the late actor Anthony Perkins (Psycho), and features a stellar cast that includes Ruth Wilson, Paula Prentiss and Bob Balaban. Following its release on Netflix in late October, the movie earned rave reviews from critics, and Ottawa’s tight-knit film community hopes that buzz will give the city a boost to attract more high-profile productions.

Doug Hempstead/ Ottawa Sun

Much of the initiative to film movies in the capital has been locally driven, and has resulted over the past six years in such other recent horror-thriller fare as The Blackcoat’s Daughter (another Perkins film); The Monster featuring Canadian actor Scott Speedman; Penthouse North with Oscar nominee Michael Keaton; and House At The End of The Street, starring Oscar-winner Jennifer Lawrence.

All those movies were shot in and around Ottawa, and augment a steady production schedule in a city better known for movie-of-the-week fare (with such campy titles as Killing Mommy and the yet-to-be-released Killer Mom) for Lifetime TV.

Ben Hrkach, a regular crew member on film sets in Ottawa, says the average number of movies being simultaneously shot in the city has increased from one to three in recent years, partly as word has spread that the Ottawa area offers directors many easily accessible urban and rural locations from which to choose.

Producers don’t need to fly in a crew since they can draw from a pool of Ottawa talent to serve as assistant directors or camera operators, in the sound and art departments, or to choose actors, which Ilona Smyth has done for most of the major films, TV series and commercials shot in the city over the past decade.

“When I was a kid, I read a lot of books and always thought about which actors reminded of the characters in the stories,” says 31-year-old Smyth. “But I didn’t realize that was any kind of job.”

The opportunity to turn those thoughts into reality and a career came while Smyth was enrolled in the film studies program at Ottawa’s Carleton University and got a gig casting background actors for Lifetime TV movies.

Sensing an opportunity to use more local talent, she established the Smyth Casting agency, and has since been the go-to Ottawa casting director for major movies, along with TV series such as the CBC sitcom Michael: Every Day, created by actor-director Don McKellar and comedian Bob Martin, and Discovery Channel’s first-scripted drama Frontier, starring Allan Hawco (Republic of Doyle) and also appearing on Netflix. “Ottawa is more than capable of accommodating major film production, and there is definitely more room for growth,” Smyth says.

The city sees that possibility, too. Two years ago, it hired Ottawa native Bruce Harvey, a former entertainment lawyer who ran a film and TV production company in Calgary, to serve as the city’s film commissioner and bring more film and TV shoots to the capital.

Harvey says the city currently generates about $100 million in annual production business, 55% of which comes from live-action projects and the rest from Ottawa’s longstanding animation community. “We also have the advantage of providing a 10% bonus on the Ontario Film and Television Tax Credit on Canadian-content production since we’re outside Toronto,” Harvey says.

Ottawa’s share is still a small slice of the overall industry. Foreign film and television production in Ontario rose 52% to $763 million last year, and Toronto will host almost 700 productions in 2016, the city says. Nationwide, the boom caused by the low dollar and well-regarded talent generates more than $5.5 billion in economic activity, according to the Canadian Media Producers Association.

A permanent production site in Ottawa to attract regular TV series work would help fuel further gains in the city, says Alphonse Ghossein, who runs Ottawa-based Go Insane Films and served as executive producer on Pretty Thing. He and other local filmmakers want the city to provide land and a 10-year freeze on property tax for a privately built sound stage. “We have a lot of producers, so if there was a studio, they would all come to it.”

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/ottawa-ready-for-its-hollywood-north-close-up-as-tight-knit-film-community-thrives/feed0penthouse-northspecialfpillosDoug Hempstead/ Ottawa SungoinsanceCharities of the Year 2016: Our annual report card on the good-deed doers worthy of your donationshttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/charities-of-the-year-2016-our-annual-report-card-on-the-good-deed-doers-worthy-of-your-donations
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/charities-of-the-year-2016-our-annual-report-card-on-the-good-deed-doers-worthy-of-your-donations#respondWed, 14 Dec 2016 17:34:45 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=707315]]>If you want to make a lasting impact with your dollar, giving to a children’s charity seems like a good way to do it. Greg Thomson, director of research at Charity Intelligence Canada, which analyzes the country’s charities, points out that helping children in need can change the course of the rest of their lives. If that change helps them stay out of jail, live independently and support themselves, society as a whole benefits, too. Of course, there’s another reason why they’re so popular. “It’s easier to raise money for them,” Thomson says. “It’s more emotionally charged.”

More than one-quarter of Canada’s 86,000 charities mention children or youth in their names or descriptions, making it a worthwhile endeavour to examine how all that money is being raised and spent for the third annual Charities of the Year project. The annual report card assesses how efficiently charities are raising and spending money, and evaluates how transparent they are about their finances and the work they do.

This year, we scrutinized the 740 children’s charities that raked in total donations of more than $100,000 in 2013, the most recent year with a full set of tax return data available. The charities all focus on helping children who are in need in some way, whether it be illness, poverty or belonging to a marginalized group. In past years, only charities that were national in scope were considered. But because this year’s report card has a narrower focus, regional charities were included. In the interest of highlighting organizations that would appeal to all readers, charities with explicitly religious missions were once again excluded.

An important part of the report card is assessing whether charities accurately reported their finances to the Canada Revenue Agency. Donors rely on charity tax returns, which are publicly available online, to find out what’s happening with their money. Unfortunately, those tax returns are often riddled with errors. Interestingly, the children’s charities under consideration this year were more diligent at tax time than their large, national peers, but they still left plenty of room for improvement.

About 40% of the children’s charities analyzed made obvious mistakes on their 2013 tax returns, the most common being that they failed to report spending any money on fundraising. After all, those donations didn’t raise themselves. That’s bad, but not as bad as the million-dollar-plus national charities analyzed in last year’s report card, half of whom made glaring errors. There are also almost certainly a significant number of less obvious mistakes.

This year’s 23 winning charities filed accurate returns, and they also posted audited financial statements on their websites, allowing donors to double-check them and get more detail. They all keep overhead costs under 35% of their total annual expenses and ensure a minimum of 65 cents from every donated dollar goes to helping needy children, as opposed to being used to raise more funds. Most importantly, they all do a great job of communicating the impact those donations are having.

The letter grade assigned to each charity evaluates how well they used evidence, statistics and clear language to explain how they spent their money and how it helped children. The report uses a scoring method designed by Charity Intelligence to assign the social impact letter grades. FPM graded the charities with an asterisk, and Charity Intelligence graded the rest. Six of the charities are winners from previous years. Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada was named charity of the year in 2015, Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada won in 2014, and Sleeping Children Around the World, Plan International Canada and World Vision Canada have been winners three years in a row.

The winning charities vary greatly in size. Ottawa-based Ten Oaks Project, which runs camps for children and youth who are LGBT or come from LGBT families, pulled in $165,000 in revenue in 2013; World Vision, meanwhile, attracted $391 million. All of them are worth your consideration.

B Boys and Girls Clubs of Canada: Provides a safe, affordable, enriching and fun place for children to go after school.

B Canadian Tire Jumpstart Charities: Assists with the costs of children’s sports programming

B* Boost Child Abuse Prevention and Intervention: Provides services and education to combat child abuse. Boost was established in 1981 by Paul Godfrey, CEO of Postmedia Network Inc., which also owns this magazine.

B-* The Children’s Foundation of Guelph and Wellington: Provides disadvantaged local children with nutrition programs, financial assistance for recreational activities and scholarships.

* FPM graded the charities with an asterisk, and Charity Intelligence graded the rest.

Tugging on donors’ heartstrings with photos of wide-eyed, needy children is a great way to get them to open their wallets. It also makes it all the more upsetting when that money isn’t being raised and spent as effectively as it should be. Here are some issues and concerns noted in the course of poring through hundreds of charity tax returns.

DUPLICATION

Do we really need 38 children’s cancer charities? How about 18 children’s wish charities? There are many examples of children’s charities with similar mandates that might benefit from consolidation, rather than competing with each other.

A particularly instructive example is the Guelph Wish Fund for Children, which has been making between 160% and 175% more than it spends for years. In 2013, it racked up a surplus of $82,000, spending just $39,000 on granting wishes and making donations to other charities. Executive director Peter Baldasso says donations have been steadily increasing even though the charity has only identified 20 seriously ill or disabled local children to grant wishes to. “That’s our challenge as a charity and we know that. How do we find more kids?” he says. “It’s not that we don’t want to spend the money, believe me.”
Baldasso says Guelph Wish plans to start distributing the extra money to local hospitals. The charity could also team up with another children’s wish charity and distribute the money to kids outside the region, but Baldasso says he isn’t particularly interested in that because donors like the local focus. “I don’t think we’ll ever team up,” he says. “We find ourselves quite successful the way we are.”

EXPENSIVE EVENTS

The next time a friend asks you to sponsor her for a run or buy a ticket to a charity gala, bear in mind that events are a spectacularly inefficient way to raise money. That gala ticket pays the bartenders, live band and souvenir T-shirt company, among many others, before any needy people see a dime.

For example, people and companies generously donate hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of supplies each year to help the Easter Seals of B.C. and the Yukon host its annual 24 Relay for the Kids, which helps send disabled children to summer camp. Excluding the value of those donated supplies, only about half the money raised by the event goes to sponsor needy children. Considering the people who donated those supplies could have donated their value directly to help the needy instead, the portion of donations eaten up by fundraising costs is more like three-quarters.

In an email, Easter Seals of B.C. and the Yukon CEO Charlene Krepiakevich says the charity is phasing out the relay after years of declining revenues. “Changes were required as participation was steadily declining, net proceeds [were] also declining, yet costs remained fixed,” she wrote.

Greg Thomson, director of research at Charity Intelligence, says people who want to attend or donate to a fundraising event should go ahead and do it, but the money they spend should come out of their entertainment budgets. “It’s really unfortunate if someone donates $100 and thinks that’s part of their donation budget and only $25 of that is actually a donation,” Thomson says. “That’s, in a sense, $75 in lost donations.”

NOT-SO-TRANSPARENT TRANSPARENCY PLEDGES

Charities often make commitments to donor transparency and accountability. However, these promises aren’t always backed up with action. Take Food for Famine, which distributes Ready-to-Use Therapeutic Food (RUTF), a fortified peanut paste, to malnourished children in developing countries. The donor promise section on its website says the charity places “a high value on transparency and accountability to all our sponsors and donors,” but it doesn’t post its financial statements on its website or provide statistics about who the charity has helped in the past year.

Food for Famine also states that 100% of donations go toward the purchase of RUTF, which is not accurate. Its overhead costs are impressively low — between 6% and 23% over the past three years, according to its tax returns — but they are not zero.

Sometimes charities make this claim if they have funding coming from another source — for example, a government grant — that covers overhead costs. It’s a dubious claim in any circumstance because money is fungible, but it’s particularly dubious in this case since Food for Famine’s tax returns state 97% of its revenue comes from tax-receipted donations. Representatives of Food for Famine did not respond to requests for comment.

OUR METHODOLOGY

We started with a data set of 2013 tax return information for Canada’s 86,000 registered charities, and narrowed that down to 740 non-religious children’s charities making more than $100,000 in donation revenue. The remaining list of charities were evaluated based on the following standards: Do donors have access to charities’ accurate, error-free tax returns (the primary means by which the public has access to their financial information)? Does the money charities take in quickly flow out again to fund good works, as opposed to accumulating in reserve funds that could fund more than three years
of budgets? Do the charities spend less than 35 cents to fundraise every donated dollar? Do the charities spend more than 65% of their annual budgets on programs and giving, as opposed to administration, salaries, political lobbying and other overhead? Have the charities posted their three most recent years of full, audited financial statements that support the numbers they reported to the CRA? Have the charities published information online that demonstrates the actual charitable work that they do and the impact it makes on their cause, using plain language and quantifiable performance metrics?

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/charities-of-the-year-2016-our-annual-report-card-on-the-good-deed-doers-worthy-of-your-donations/feed0home-page-charities-main-artclairebrownellcharity-red-flags-warningSex, stupidity and greed: The Bossies Awards wraps up a year of management bloopers and misstepshttp://business.financialpost.com/features/the-bossies
http://business.financialpost.com/features/the-bossies#respondThu, 08 Dec 2016 19:50:01 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=720930]]>From the Greed is Good Award to the Do As I Say, Not As I Do Award, sex, stupidity and greed feature in 10 of the Financial Post Magazine’s favourite moments]]>http://business.financialpost.com/features/the-bossies/feed0the-bossies-for-the-redirectspecialfpHow women dominate the country’s most powerful advisory council — the one that pulls Canada’s economic stringshttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/how-women-dominate-the-countrys-most-powerful-advisory-council-the-one-that-pulls-canadas-economic-strings
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/how-women-dominate-the-countrys-most-powerful-advisory-council-the-one-that-pulls-canadas-economic-strings#respondWed, 07 Dec 2016 13:51:56 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=710153]]>

National Post

With its stone chimneys and wooden verandas in the Queen Anne Revival style, the house that Thomas Willson, the Ontario inventor and industrialist, built on a cliff overlooking Meech Lake north of Ottawa a century ago is a grand, rustic summer estate. In the middle of May, the house, now federally owned, welcomed a gathering worthy of its grandeur. Cabinet ministers included Bill Morneau, finance; Amarjeet Sohi, infrastructure; MaryAnn Mihychuk, employment; Navdeep Bains, innovation; and Chrystia Freeland, international trade.

The ministers came to meet Morneau’s economic advisers, a group that includes two PhDs in chemistry, two venture-capital gurus based in Silicon Valley, the chief economist of the World Economic Forum, and a consultant from a First Nation on the north tip of Vancouver Island known for success in aboriginal economic development. Oh, and it just so happens that everyone on that list is a woman.

When Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his majority-women cabinet last year, some dismissed the move as window dressing. Politicians, after all, are the people on stage — the actors who mouth other people’s thoughts. Then Morneau named his Advisory Council on Economic Growth, whom he asked for a strategy, given our aging population, “to provide higher living standards and greater opportunity for the middle class.”

Morneau chose eight women and six men for this elite group of advisers who met at Meech Lake. This gender balance suggests something more radical. Economic advisers are the puppet masters: they decide what strings to pull, and make the big decisions about what moves would benefit the country. To put more women than men on a group of policy wonks in the backroom suggests, quite simply, that women are the best economic advisers around.

“There was a real effort to find people with different perspectives,” says Suzanne Fortier, principal of Montreal’s McGill University and an advisory council member, who studies artificial intelligence methodologies for protein structure determination. “If the search process is broader, you will get the names.”

By casting a wide net, Morneau appears to have found the best and brightest — the majority of whom just happen to be women. For example, Katherine Barr grew up jumping horses on the farm of Ian Miller, the equestrian Olympian, in Perth, Ont. The mother of two is now a general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures and managing director at Wildcat Venture Partners, both early stage technology venture firms based in Silicon Valley. Married to a fellow Canadian she met in California, she also helped found C100, which connects Canadian tech startups with U.S. venture capital, and sits on the board of Communitech, a Waterloo, Ont.-based organization that helps entrepreneurs.

Barr may live far away from Ottawa, and the $1 per year she gets for her work on Morneau’s council translates to just 75¢ U.S., but she calls it an “honour” to do her bit to help Canada become more outward-looking. “When we first got C100 off the ground, we were accused of being a brain drain,” she says. “I think that’s really small-minded thinking. We call ourselves more like a bridge. Why isn’t Canada better positioned to leverage the expats living around the world, to increase prosperity and to increase connection globally? To me, it’s this amazing connection that all the Canadian expats offer — we call it a brain flow for people and ideas and business to flow between Canada and places like Silicon Valley.”

The growth council, Barr adds, “is a massive commitment. It’s been an incredible amount of hours that has gone into that.” But she, like the other women on the council who spoke to FPM, downplays the gender issue; they prefer to emphasize the talent of all the members. Gender politics only come up in this story because, while governments appear to believe in the power of women to solve economic problems, Bay Street has yet to get the memo.

Julie Oliver/OttawaCitizen

Women occupy just 12% of all the seats on the boards of publicly traded companies in Canada. Last year, just 76, or 15%, of the 521 board seats that changed hands went to women — even after most of Canada’s securities regulators began a push to increase women on boards. The regulators have not set a hard goal, but the powerful Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan has suggested all companies should have at least three women on their board by 2020 or face delisting from the stock exchange.

Maureen Jensen, the first female CEO of the Ontario Securities Commission, Canada’s largest stock-market regulator, called the small number of women appointed to boards in the past year “confounding” in a September speech to Bay Street. “Without an improvement here, we will never reach 30% female board representation,” she told a room full of executives.

Resistance to women on boards puzzles Anne-Marie Hubert, who runs Ernst & Young in Quebec, since companies with more women on the board outperform those with fewer women. But companies lack courage, or are just more comfortable with men, she says. “The guys are used to taking another guy out after work for a beer to tell him the rules of the game. But a 50-year-old man can’t take a 35-year-old woman out for a beer. It wouldn’t look good.”

Outside corporate boardrooms, though, women are rising more quickly: five of the 23 members on the Conference Board of Canada are women; the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board counts five women among its 12 members; and the Business/Higher Education Roundtable, which tries to strengthen co-operation between employers and educators, has 10 women among its 27 members. You’ll also find a higher percentage of women on many provincial economic advisory teams than in corporate C-suites.

Marie Bountrogianni, a psychologist and former Ontario cabinet minister who now runs continuing education at Ryerson University in Toronto, says government and academe these days offer more flexibility to accommodate, say, parents raising children. “My financial chief [a man] does kid duty one day a week,” she notes. Giving men more freedom to look after kids takes away the stigma of women doing the same, and frees women up to do more demanding jobs. Hubert says Ernst & Young changed its parental leave policy to encourage men to stay home with young children. “The first man who did it was named a partner while he was on parental leave.”

Canada’s business culture, however, is generally more conservative than academe or government. That conservatism helped Canada weather the 2008 economic crisis, but also means companies don’t promote women. Jensen, a geologist by training who made her career in Canada’s mining sector, wants Bay Street to harness the value of women in senior roles to become more competitive. “We don’t have enough access to skilled manpower in this country,” she said recently, sitting in a boardroom on the 20th floor of a Toronto office tower. “We are a small economy, comparatively. And so if you take 50% of the population and move them to the side, you’ve really just reduced your ability to recruit dramatically.”

Jensen applauds Morneau for the composition of the federal growth council. “It’s very inspirational and it’s very deliberate,” she says. “People are looking at that and saying, ‘Finally we are seeing some progress, we are seeing some leadership right from the top that this is an important issue. And everyone has taken notice of that.”

François-Philippe Champagne, elected last year as a Liberal MP for Saint-Maurice—Champlain in Quebec, is parliamentary secretary to Morneau. Champagne, who spent his career in executive roles with multinationals in Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, says governments need economic advice from smart women. “We tried to look at people who can bring us big, bold ideas,” he says. “Not all the thoughts are here in Ottawa. We really need to branch out.

“I’m 46,” he adds. “I come from a generation where there were more women than men in my law school class. If the minister of finance can showcase women who are leaders in civil society and in business, hopefully we will lead by example and big corporations will bring in more gender balance. When you have women engaged fully in shaping our future, you get some of the best outcomes.”

Another advisory council member is Carol Anne Hilton, CEO of Transformation International, a Vancouver-based company that helps First Nations develop government and administration systems, and to connect with capital. Hilton, who grew up in a settlement of the Nuu chah nulth nation on northern Vancouver Island, holds an MBA from the University of Hertfordshire in England. She now has a home in Victoria, an office in Vancouver, and appears to spend her life on airplanes. She says she brings a message of hope to the council: Canada’s First Nations are a huge potential force of talent and capital ready to work and invest in forestry, agriculture, aquaculture and manufacturing.

“There is a need for Canadians to begin to understand the size of the emerging aboriginal economy and its importance to Canada,” says Hilton, speaking after she met a client in Fort McMurray, Alta. “Are we looking at a $100-billion aboriginal economy? There is a high productivity of business enterprises from First Nations, Métis and Inuit. How do we support that?” As part of the growth council’s fact-finding process, Hilton held two roundtables this year, in Toronto and in Vancouver, with aboriginal business leaders. “We heard a lot around the need for investment and inclusion,” she says.

For Hilton, the challenge hits close to home. In 2014, Canada’s Supreme Court upheld lower court rulings that affirm her First Nations’ fishing rights. Even so, Canada’s Department of Fisheries and Oceans still will not negotiate, she says. “A fundamental shift has to happen in thinking to create a balance in Canada for social and economic development for Inuit, First Nations and Métis.”

Colleen De Neve/Calgary Herald

Other women on the council include Elyse Allan, CEO of General Electric Canada; Jennifer Blanke, chief economist at the World Economic Forum (an American who lives in Geneva); Carol Lee, CEO of Linacare Cosmetherapy Inc.; and Ilse Treurnicht, a Rhodes scholar from Oxford of South African origin, who runs the MaRS Discovery District, an innovation hub in Toronto.

The advisory team, by all accounts, has worked very well together; the main adversary at their first meeting proved to be the climate. Rain in the morning and black flies interfered with a photo op. As one might expect for western Quebec in mid-May, it began to snow fairly heavily during the day. McGill’s Fortier recalls that some participants had a tough time getting back to Ottawa. Even so, the weather could not dampen the spirits of the assembled. “The weather caught everyone by surprise,” she recalls. “It was a late spring. But we love working. This is a bunch of people who really enjoy to work. And we have an excellent chair, Dominic Barton [global managing director at McKinsey & Co.], who has a lot of experience in getting a group to work well together.”

The council held its second meeting in Toronto in August, along with numerous conference calls and working groups. In late October, after the council’s third meeting, Morneau released the council’s report, with three recommendations: create an infrastructure development bank, create a foreign direct investment agency, and increase annual immigration to almost 500,000 people per year. “Connectivity, innovation, inclusion and growth,” is how Hilton sums up the ideas. “The previous government would have only seen growth. We are really able to get bold ideas.”

The council plans further work, and so the question arises: How do these women find the time for all this volunteer work on behalf of Canada? Barr’s two children, for example, are aged seven and four. Fortier also sits on the Canada Foundation for Innovation, Strategic Committee of Investissements d’Excellence Bordeaux, Steering Committee of the Networks of Centres of Excellence and Ontario Task Force on Competitiveness, along with a Montreal business women’s network.

“I don’t have a young family anymore,” Fortier says. “It’s a matter of having very good time management. I love to cook. When I had less of these things, I used to cook a seven-course meal. Now when I invite my friends over — and I do — I say, ‘I’m inviting you for a picnic.’ I get prepared foods from caterers, some smoked salmon. We just want to get together.”

Fortier says Trudeau’s experience as an undergrad at McGill, where women makes up 57% of the students and the percentage of international students is the highest in Canada, shaped his inclusive approach. “His experience at McGill rubbed off,” she says. “Talent comes from a very diverse group of people.” And the ones selected for Morneau’s council are no shrinking violets. Indeed, his hot-shot female puppet masters can be an intimidating bunch. Take Angela Strange, who grew up in Ottawa, graduated from business school at Stanford University and stayed in California. She turned briefly pro as a marathon runner, launched a startup that was bought out by Google and is now an investment partner at Andreessen Horowitz in Silicon Valley in addition to co-chairing C100. The anecdote Strange shares over the phone from her home in San Francisco about how she juggles her day job, other commitments, workout regimen and the “honour” of serving on Morneau’s advisory council, gives a whole new meaning to multitasking.

“I realized I had hit a point of ridiculousness about a month ago,” Strange says. “The growth council had this early morning phone call, a consultation with a pretty senior person, and I knew I was going to be speaking in the first 15 minutes, and for the next 45 I was just going to be listening. So I got up really early, got my bike prepared and got in my bike clothes.” Strange spoke on the call for 15 minutes. At 5:45 a.m. she boarded her bicycle, slipped from her home onto the dark highways of the Bay Area and rode 40 miles to her office in Menlo Park. “I listened to this conference call as I was biking in the pitch black, down beside the highway, and I was, ‘All right, this is a little bit silly,’ but I was so proud of myself.”

Strange’s early morning ride/call does not just illustrate the calibre of woman on the growth council, it also offers us a glimpse of the kind of productivity to which we might all wish to aspire if Canada is to succeed in the 21st century.

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/how-women-dominate-the-countrys-most-powerful-advisory-council-the-one-that-pulls-canadas-economic-strings/feed0the-puppet-masterPeter KuitenbrouwerNational Postchartchart3chart2chart4Why people happily line up to pay more than $100 for a single beerhttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/why-people-happily-line-up-to-pay-more-than-100-for-a-single-beer
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/why-people-happily-line-up-to-pay-more-than-100-for-a-single-beer#respondMon, 14 Nov 2016 16:43:35 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=701506]]>A beer festival conjures up images of inebriated 20-somethings wearing six-pack boxes as hats and generally behaving boorishly. But as such events go, The Boston Beer Co.’s soiree during Toronto Beer Week in mid-September had very little, if any, of that. Dubbed “For the Love of Beer” and held at 99 Gallery, an event space that doubles as a gym in the trendy West Queen West area, younger folks clad in the city’s hip uniform of dark jeans and black tops (even the band was dressed in all black) were throwing the beer down — but not the way Blue Jays fans do.

On draft or in bottles was an array of brews such as Samuel Adams Rebel IPA, Octoberfest and the near-ubiquitous Boston Lager, the flagship responsible for making Boston Beer the largest craft brewer on the continent. If chai tea was more your jam, there was a Chai Saison on tap that brought a lot of cinnamon and nutmeg to the party; if something smokier to match your eyeliner was needed, perhaps Cinder Blonde Gratzer hit the spot.

One beer was conspicuously missing from the free-flowing taps — Utopias — and for good reason. A 710-ml bottle of this 28 per cent alcohol nectar will set you back $112.25 at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the crown corporation that controls liquor sales in the province. Let’s repeat that: one beer, $112.25. And that’s cheaper than it can be bought anywhere else, even in the U.S. In Ohio, for example, that same bottle costs about US$200 now that the state has allowed high-alcohol beers to be sold.

Earlier that day, however, Boston Beer founder and brewer Jim Koch led a tutored tasting at the LCBO’s swanky Summerhill location that included one-ounce sips of all the same beers that were available at 99 Gallery with the exception that Utopias was the crowning glory. The tutorial’s $75 cost covered the seven ounces of beer, but gave patrons the option of buying one of just 350 bottles of Utopias that the LCBO sold through its stores this year (another 350 were sold through its Vintages website five days later and quickly sold out).

The buzz about Utopias — and you will get a buzz if you drink the whole bottle in one sitting, something that is not advised — is more than just a one-off sideshow. The first Utopias was released in 2002, but it contains beer that is even older than that. The 2015 vintage that was available at the LCBO this fall has beer that had been aging for 22 years — now 23 years, given that it’s already spent a year in the bottle. Many will let it age even more, adding further value on the resale market. For example, a 2003 vintage of Utopias was available on eBay Canada in October for $1,088.42.

Rarity factor

Why so expensive? “Effectively, it’s the same thing that causes wine to be so expensive,” says world-renowned beer expert Stephen Beaumont. “There’s a rarity factor and there’s an age factor.” For one thing, unlike just about every other beer, Utopias is not a single beer, but a blend of beers and each has its own characteristics. Some have been aged in wooden bourbon barrels, some in brandy barrels, some in wine barrels, and then they are all put together as one.

“I’ve tasted this beer since its very first incarnation and most, certainly not all, but most of the different versions since then,” Beaumont adds. “And it just keeps getting better and more interesting.” In the Pocket Beer Guide 2015: The World’s Best Craft and Traditional Beers, Beaumont and co-author Tim Webb give Utopias their highest rating: four stars.

This is one of those beers that is technically impossible

Adding to the rarity factor is that nobody outside the brewery can figure out how Utopias can continue to age when its 28 per cent alcohol should kill off the yeast that keeps beer fermenting. “This is one of those beers that is technically impossible,” Beaumont says. And yet it exists. One theory is that the brewer adds yeast and sugar in the form of maple syrup throughout the aging process to generate higher levels of alcohol, but that’s entirely speculation.

Aside from the lack of technical know-how, another reason more beers like Utopias aren’t available is that they simply don’t make any money for the brewer, even at a price point well above $100, given the time and expertise it takes and the warehouse space that has to be set aside.

“This is a marketing exercise, it’s not about making money for Sam,” says Beaumont, whose latest collaboration with Webb, the second edition of the World Atlas of Beer: The Essential Guide to the Beers of the World, was published in September. But the strategy of generating publicity by making one-offs and seasonals, while making money off core brands, has become quite prevalent in the industry thanks to Boston Beer’s success with it.

As for those lucky enough to get their hands on a 2015 Utopias, you could, as Beaumont did with the 2010 vintage, experiment by exposing it to air now and then, giving it a shake or exposing it to different temperatures, and then every so often taking a sip to see how it has changed. Or you could store it for 10 years and make some extra bread on eBay.

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/why-people-happily-line-up-to-pay-more-than-100-for-a-single-beer/feed0utopias-grandyhollowayfpA current affair: Volkswagen’s future may depend on the electric carhttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/a-current-affair-volkswagens-future-may-depend-on-the-electric-car
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/a-current-affair-volkswagens-future-may-depend-on-the-electric-car#respondFri, 11 Nov 2016 19:36:55 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=698902]]>Pardon the tired old Phoenix rising clichés, but if Volkswagen is to emerge from the ashes of its debilitating, now-one-year-old Dieselgate scandal, it will be on the wings of electric vehicles. Having hitherto largely ignored the electrified market in favour of fuel-sipping but nitrogen-oxide-spewing diesels, Europe’s largest automaker is now promising that it will sell one million EVs a year by 2025.

The first of this new fleet of emission-free wonders will be the I.D. Golf-like in appearance and size, the I.D.’s 168 horsepower promise hot hatch performance while its 400-to-600-kilometre range — depending on the size of it scalable battery — offers Tesla-like convenience. Slated for production in 2020, the I.D.’s innovation is not limited to its electric propulsion. It also offers a first glimpse of Volkswagen’s vision of a fully autonomous future with an entirely new interior “spatial experience.” Among other breakthroughs, “Open Space” puts the steering wheel retract into the dashboard when operating in fully-automated “I.D. Pilot” mode.

The rest of the Volkswagen Group is also converting to lithium-ion, with Porsche promising a Tesla Model S-like Mission E by 2020 with 600 horsepower, all-wheel-drive and the ability to blast to 100 kilometres an hour in less than 3.5 seconds. And, putting further emphasis on the Tesla comparisons, Porsche is also rumoured to be developing a smaller Model 3 competitor.

Not to be left out of the party, Audi is pushing its e-tron Quattro concept. No less than three electric motors — one on the front axle, one each for the rear wheels — combine for 590 pound-feet of torque while a 95 kilowatt-hour battery allows 500 kilometres between recharges.

In all, the Volkswagen Group is promising no less than 30 electric and plug-in models by 2025. The demise of diesel may yet breathe new life into electric cars.

Electric company

VW’s I.D. electric car will have lots of siblings. Here are three of them.

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The electrified remake of VW’s iconic Microbus, the BUDD-e promises as much as 600 kilometres of range and all-wheel-drive. No word on a Westfalia Camper version though.

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Porsche’s Mission E promises 500 kilometres of range and its 800-volt DC recharger will get you back on the road in just 15 minutes. Yes, quicker than Tesla’s vaunted Supercharger.

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Boasting 500 horsepower, the e-tron Quattro is Audi’s answer to Tesla’s Model X. Look for it in Audi dealerships as early as 2019.

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/a-current-affair-volkswagens-future-may-depend-on-the-electric-car/feed0vw_paris_concept_1specialfpHandout / VWHandout / PorcheHandout / AudiEvery company needs a money manager and so might every wealthy investorhttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/every-company-needs-a-money-manager-and-so-might-every-wealthy-investor
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/every-company-needs-a-money-manager-and-so-might-every-wealthy-investor#respondWed, 09 Nov 2016 16:55:36 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=700009]]>Managing an investment portfolio was relatively easy in the 1980s and 1990s, but there has been a significant increase in complexity over the past decade. The investment climate and markets is more volatile and demanding, and today’s low interest rate and returns don’t look like they are going to change anytime soon. To get better returns, the wealthy are adding non-traditional investments such as private equity, real estate and hedge funds to their portfolios, as well as diversifying globally, which just increases the potential complications.

It’s tempting then to turn the whole thing over to someone else to manage if you can get through the sheer volume of asset managers, products and strategies to pick someone. But even among wealthy investors, there is still a lot of confusion about whether they should have discretionary or non-discretionary investment portfolios. In other words, should you and your family manage the investments, or outsource the decisions to an individual or a firm of experienced professionals? For those who lack the investment experience, time or discipline to be involved with day-to-day decision making, discretionary investment management services are a popular option. Firms that provide this are called outsourced chief investment officers and should be licensed as portfolio managers with a provincial securities regulator such as the Ontario Securities Commission.

But not all discretionary services offered by the country’s myriad banks, brokers and portfolio managers are the same and there are at least eight important factors to consider when choosing one. Does the firm: Have the skill, experience and resources to evaluate and manage assets across public and private markets? Have an “open architecture” approach, or the ability to allocate capital without conflict-of-interest to any independent asset manager from around the world in areas such as direct lending, real estate, private equity and hedge funds? Have the ability to access “best-in-class” institutional quality traditional and alternative asset managers? Provide a culture centred on client relationship management and strong communication? Offer robust performance reporting along with relevant custom benchmarks? Allow for clients to meet or speak with underlying asset managers? Take tax considerations into account to optimize returns on an after-tax basis? Offer more than a one-size-fits-all approach that utilizes just one or a few asset classes, such as stocks and bonds?

If the answer to any of these questions is no, you should probably look elsewhere, or, at the very least, realize you’ll have to compensate for that lack of ability in some other way at your own expense and time. But if your family hires an outsourced CIO, you and the advising representative (a registered individual who can provide investment advice at a portfolio management firm) will start your relationship by discussing and documenting your unique investment objectives and constraints. Topics covered should include how much investment risk you are willing to take, the desired level of return for taking on that risk, liquidity needs, tax considerations, performance reporting and benchmarks, and the asset classes and markets you will allow your portfolio to be invested in. A written investment policy statement is then provided as a best practice that documents all of the above.

Your advising representative is then authorized to make all the necessary investment decisions (within the agreed-upon guidelines) and will not require consent for individual transactions. This service, which also consists of regular communication through methods that best suit your family — whether it’s in-person meetings, webcam meetings, telephone conversations, emails and newsletters — forms an important part of the ongoing relationship. The relationship is of prime importance, since your investment objectives and strategy may need to change to provide a tailored fit as conditions within your family change.

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/every-company-needs-a-money-manager-and-so-might-every-wealthy-investor/feed0moneyspecialfpThe definitive winter travel guide: Top 10 spots to enjoy — with or without snowhttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/the-definitive-winter-travel-destinations-list-top-10-spots-to-enjoy-with-or-without-snow
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/the-definitive-winter-travel-destinations-list-top-10-spots-to-enjoy-with-or-without-snow#respondTue, 08 Nov 2016 18:33:49 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=693870]]>Cold weather is fast approaching, so your winter travel getaway planning can’t be put off any longer. Of course, there are myriad vacation destinations, accommodations and activities, both time-honoured and a bit off the beaten path, from snow-capped peaks to sun-kissed beaches, and culinary arts to arts and culture. But here are 10 top spots to enjoy, with or without snow, this season.

Embrace Modern Architecture in Palm Springs, Calif.

Why Go: With about 350 days of sunshine a year, Palm Springs is a veritable oasis for hiking and outdoor activities, including biking, jeep adventures, excellent golf and tennis. Evoking retro-chic stylings and a touch of golden age Hollywood glamour, Palm Springs of recent years has been busily reinventing itself. Whatever your fancy, from eclectic shopping to superb restaurants and elegant resorts to a stellar cocktail scene, the little city that blossomed in the desert has all this going on and so much more.

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Exceptional To-Do’s: The ideal time to visit is during the winter months when temps are more temperate and the event calendar is especially active. There’s the 28th annual Palm Springs International Film Festival in early January and the four-day, mid-January PGA Career Builder Challenge golf tournament in nearby La Quinta. But it’s Modernism Week, held over 11 days each February, that is perhaps the most anticipated of all wintertime events. Celebrating mid-century modern design, art, fashion and culture, this annual festival includes home and garden tours, films and lectures, vintage travel trailer exhibits and nightly parties.

Where to Eat: For all-day breakfast in a bustling indoor/outdoor setting, head to Cheeky’s for a piled high platter of chorizo and queso fresco-loaded chilaquiles, and a side of the signature flight of bacon featuring rotating flavours. At Ace Hotel & Swim Club, grab a local specialty, the date shake, with a shot of bourbon for a boozy version.

Where to Stay: Designed in 1960 by Albert Frey as a hotel getaway for celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and Lucille Ball, The Monkey Tree Hotel has been lovingly restored to its mid-century modern glory, with 16 rooms, a private courtyard and Scandinavian spa.

Immerse Yourself in Art in Glasgow, Scotland

Why Go: Scotland’s biggest city has a seemingly infinite array of attractions for the curious. If you fancy live theatre, A Play, A Pie and A Pint is an exclusively Glaswegian treasure featuring lunchtime pub-style performances with, you guessed it, a meat pie and pint of beer.

Ian Robertson/Postmedia

Exceptional To-Do’s: Visiting one or more of the spectacular galleries is a must. Options include Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, where the recently redesigned Life Gallery showcases collections pertaining to natural history, while the Riverside Museum displays a dizzying array of transport-related items, from trams to motorcycles and bicycles to locomotives. Art and design enthusiasts should check out the original collections and painstakingly reproduced interiors designed by noted Scottish architect and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife, artist Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh, throughout the halls of The Mackintosh House, and also at House for an Art Lover, the latter being an ideal locale for lunch or afternoon tea.

Where to Eat: The Ubiquitous Chip has appeared in the U.K.’s respected The Good Food Guide for 45 consecutive years, and features ever-changing menus with a nod to traditional dishes, including the perfectly aged Scottish Aberdeen Angus beef or the Loch Melfort sea trout with chard, radish and brown shrimp. Save room for the famous Caledonian oatmeal ice cream with toasted honey oats.

Where to Stay: The suitably named Dakota Deluxe is a gorgeous new hotel in the heart of the city centre. But five-star luxury awaits less than an hour’s drive away at ultra-posh Cameron House on “the bonnie, bonnie banks o’ Loch Lomond” (as the traditional Scottish song goes). Here you’ll find 17 treatment rooms and a VIP couples room at The Spa, and four luxurious dining options, including Michelin-starred Restaurant Martin Wishart.

Exceptional To-Do’s: If you’ve ever wanted to hit the slopes with an Olympic athlete as your personal guide, here’s your chance. Whistler Blackcomb Snow School has created the intimate, exclusive “Ski or Ride with an Olympian” program, with capacity capped at five per group, which provides the opportunity to pick up helpful tips, be regaled by stories and spend time together on the mountain (and with lift line priority, to boot). Afterward, unwind and rejuvenate whilst soaking in a series of open air hydrotherapeutic baths at Scandinave Spa Whistler. With its fabulous views of Whistler, Blackcomb and Sproatt mountains, this peaceful, Nordic-inspired outdoor spa is a fine way to soothe achy après-ski muscles — particularly if an optional massage is tossed in for good measure.

Where to Eat: The team behind acclaimed Araxi Restaurant + Bar has opened Bar Oso on one level and The Cellar on the lower level of Whistler Village. Bar Oso features Spanish-influenced small plates, shared boards and an inspired selection of complementary cocktails, while The Cellar features both a show kitchen for interactive chef demonstrations and a veritable wall of wine.

Where to Stay: Located in Upper Village at the base of Blackcomb Mountain, Fairmont Chateau Whistler offers a unique ski-in, ski-out experience virtually right to the lobby entrance of the grand, chateau-style hotel. The new and aptly named Alpine Suites offer plenty of space complete with dual-sided fireplaces and spectacular views of surrounding mountains.

Live for the Music in Nashville, Tennessee

Why Go: Millions travel to Nashville each year to delve into its rich culture and music scene. Dubbed “Music City” for good reason, there is no shortage of live music venues and musical stylings to suit every taste, from the Nashville Symphony at Schermerhorn Symphony Center to iconic Ryman Auditorium, and from unplugged performances at Bluebird Café to dancing at Robert’s Western World honky-tonk complete with fried bologna sandwiches.

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Exceptional To-Do’s: Cheekwood Botanical Gar­den & Museum of Art is charming and tranquil, with a sculpture trail, themed gardens and natural landscapes. Built in 1932, the extravagant limestone Georgian mansion, once the private estate of the Cheek family — early investors in Maxwell House coffee — now serves as art gallery, with more than 600 paintings on display including important works by John Singer Sargent and Andy Warhol. During the holiday season, Cheekwood becomes a magical wonderland celebration of family-friendly events, including Santa and reindeer visits, cookie decorating and live musical performances.

Where to Eat: Located in The Gulch, one of Nashville’s most popular neighbourhoods, Flyte World Dining & Wine Bar features an award-winning wine list and creative farm-to-table cuisine, such as local country ham with whipped honey and cornbread. For a decidedly more casual experience, walk around the block and dine Southern-style at award-winning Arnold’s Country Kitchen, specializing in some of Nashville’s best and ubiquitous “Meat and Three,” where diners choose one from a selection of meats plus three side dish options. Prepare for a bit of a lineup, albeit fast-moving. More than 30 years on, it continues to be a popular destination.

Where to Stay: Consistently ranked as one of the top hotels in the U.S., a stay at the historic Hermitage Hotel is a truly memorable experience, evoking a timeless touch of luxury and glamour. Feeling flush? Reserve the Presidential Suite for an opulent 1,500 square feet of elegance. In the large marble bathroom, soak up the ambiance in the oversized Jacuzzi drawn by your Bath Concierge. Coming up to Valentine’s Day, ask about the “Bel Amour” package complete with “rose petal turndown service.”

Be a Global Gourmet in Saint Lucia

Why Go: A must-see jewel of an island in the Eastern Caribbean, Saint Lucia boasts jaw-dropping landscapes and postcard-perfect vistas at just about every turn, from scenic waterfalls to lush rainforests, and golden sand beaches to the iconic Piton mountains — two majestic volcanic cones and a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site. Saint Lucia has something for every traveller, from adventure to leisure and wellness to culinary arts.

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Exceptional To-Do’s: With so many attractions, Island Routes Caribbean Adventures can help guide the way, creating the best experience possible with plenty of variety for all. On land, steer an all-terrain buggy into the world’s only drive-in volcano with bubbling sulphur springs before taking a dip in the mineral-rich mud baths and rinsing off in nearby waterfalls. By sea, hop aboard a sport fishing boat and experience a spectacular day of deep sea fishing, casting a line for wahoo, mahi-mahi, tuna or blue marlin.

Where to Eat and Stay: For couples and as a wedding destination, it’s hard to top a stay at any one of the three luxurious all-inclusive Sandals Resorts in Saint Lucia, including Sandals Halcyon Beach, Sandals La Toc and Sandals Grande Saint Lucian — each featuring its own unique ambiance and sumptuous touches.

With Sandals’ option-expanding Stay at One; Play at Three program, you can enjoy exchange privileges at any of the three resorts via complimentary transfers. In other words, three times the exceptional activities, amenities, entertainment and beaches. This also translates to a whopping combined 27 Global Gourmet dining options, from island fare to regional Italian, Pacific Rim to British Pub, and Southwestern to French haute cuisine. At exotic Bombay Club, taste the intricately spiced lobster butter masala, perhaps paired with a glass of Robert Mondavi Twin Oaks Pinot Grigio.

Sip Whisky on the Mountain in Park City, Utah

Why Go: A top ski and winter sports destination (bobsledding, anyone?), Park City is globally renowned for its seemingly endless abundance of incredible snow. Park City Mountain Resort is now the largest ski and snowboard resort in the U.S., and has direct lift access to the town’s historic Main Street. Park City has plenty in store for non-skiers, too. Case in point, it’s home to the Sundance Film Festival each January, with film aficionados and celebrities sharing a love for the art of film.

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Exceptional To-Do’s: Whet your whistle with a whisky tasting at High West Distillery, the world’s first (and only) ski-in, ski-out whisky distillery. Highlights include two bars, an intimate restaurant, a chemistry lab plus stainless steel mash cookers and fermenting barrels. Take a tour, and then sip and taste after a long day spent skiing, shopping or spa-ing.

Where to Eat: There are more than 16 on-mountain dining options and signature menus to choose from. For a special evening out, the award-winning Riverhorse on Main features creative Rocky Mountain cuisine and flawless service.

Where to Stay: A luxurious stay at the Park City Boutique & Spa includes access to amenities including hot tubs, sauna, eucalyptus steam room, pool and health club. There’s also a full range of massage, facials and other treatments available. And, of course, its close proximity to all the action is a definite perk.

Experience an Eco-Tour of the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador

Why Go: An archipelago consisting of 14 islands and dozens of islets, the Galápagos Islands are located 1,000 kilometres west of the Ecuadorian mainland in the Pacific Ocean. A UNESCO World Natural Heritage Site since 1979, and home to a national parkland marine biological reserve, the biodiversity of the Islands certainly influenced Charles Darwin in 1835, thereafter leading him to develop his theory of natural selection. A unique and diverse range of sky, sea and land dwellers can be found in abundance, including iguanas, Galapagos tortoises, albatrosses, sea lions and three species of boobies.

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Exceptional To-Do’s and Where to Eat and Stay: From snorkeling with tropical fish to scuba diving with sharks, and strolling white sand beaches to hiking along volcanoes, the wonders of Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands continually inspire. To get the full experience in an eco-conscious way, choose a six- to 14-day cruising expedition with Ecoventura, with a ratio of two very knowledgeable guides for every 20 guests. The cabins may not be the ultimate in luxury, but they are comfortable, clean and air-conditioned. With an emphasis on locally inspired dishes, the menus are quite impressive, including plenty of fresh produce and seafood, Ecuadorian coffee and cheesecake made with naranjilla fruit.

Tailor-suited for active adults and families, the best time to visit is from December to March, with calmer seas, excellent weather, and an abundance of wildlife. At Finch Bay Eco Hotel on Santa Cruz Island in the bay of Puerto Ayora, it’s up to you whether to relax or explore. If relaxing, the secluded beachfront location, comfortable guest rooms and organic cuisine are all pretty spectacular. If exploring, combine your stay with a land or sea excursion arranged through the hotel and guided by top naturalists.

Surf and Snorkel in Riviera Nayarit, Mexico

Why Go: Curving north from Puerto Vallarta almost 320 kilometres along the Pacific coastline, and with the Sierra Madre Mountains providing a stunning backdrop, Riviera Nayarit is still relatively new as a travel destination, yet is becoming increasingly renowned for its fresh seafood, whale and bird watching, polo tournaments and world-class surfing. It also has championship golfing, including two Jack Nicklaus-designed courses complete with stunning ocean views in ultra-exclusive Punta Mita. “Mexico’s Pacific Treasure,” Riviera Nayarit includes the villages and communities of Nuevo Vallarta, Punta Mita, Sayulita and San Francisco (a.k.a. San Pancho).

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Exceptional To-Do’s: For an eco-adventure day trip, book a tour to the Marietas Islands National Park, a small group of protected volcanic islands located off the coast of Punta Mita. Above water, expert guides at Punta Mita Expeditions will take you past hidden caverns and archways, pointing out migratory birds resting on rocky crags along the way. Below the surface, the clear blue waters and abundance of marine life — including sea turtles and dolphins — combine to create the ideal environment for some of the best snorkeling conditions anywhere. In the centre of the Islands, swimmers donning fins will be rewarded for their tunnel-swimming efforts at Playa Escondida (Hidden Beach).

Where to Eat: In the laid-back beach town of San Francisco, enjoy a restorative brunch set in the charming courtyard of Bistro Organico inside Hotel Cielo Rojo. Nosh on a stack of fluffy pancakes topped with banana, walnuts and drizzled with local honey, or try the nopales rancheros, a grilled cactus riff on huevos rancheros with fresh salsa, avocado and homemade corn tortillas.

Where to Stay: Set on more than 22 pristine, secluded acres, Five-Star Alliance St. Regis Punta Mita Resort delivers incomparable luxury, with 89 guest rooms and 31 suites — some with adjoining rooms for large families or small groups — along with tennis courts, infinity pools, a Remède Spa and private butler service.

Spend Midnight in the Desert Garden of Phoenix

Why Go: Arizona each year attracts more than a million Canadian visitors seeking escape from cold winter months, and Phoenix, its state capital, is known for its warm, dry climate. Phoenix has a plethora of reasons to visit, from outdoor activities, such as hiking, climbing, biking and golfing, to indulgent spa and wellness options, and from excellent shopping and dining to prominent cultural attractions.

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Exceptional To-Do’s: With more than 4,000 species, Desert Botanical Garden in Papago Park is home to one of the world’s most incredible living collections of desert plants, including towering saguaros and giant cacti. This breathtaking landscape is also the backdrop for Las Luminarias — one of Arizona’s most anticipated events of the holiday season. Each night until the end of December, stroll the softly illuminated garden trails, a cup of warm cider in-hand, listening to handbells ringing and Mariachis singing. Also in Papago Park is family-friendly Zoolights at Phoenix Zoo, a magical illuminated holiday tradition featuring ice sculptors, lakeside music-in-motion shows and glimmering 3-D light sculptures.

Where to Eat: For the awe-inspiring scenery alone, it’s worth the drive (or make use of the exclusive private chauffeur service) to Kai at Sheraton Grand at Wild Horse Pass. As Arizona’s only Forbes Five-Star restaurant, you can be sure the entire culinary experience will be beyond compare. For dinner theatre at its finest, settle in for the 12-course Journey Tasting Menu featuring Native American-inspired fare, such as grilled buffalo tenderloin with cactus flower buds, smoked corn and chiles.

Where to Stay: Located in the downtown core near cultural mainstays such as the Phoenix Art Museum, Heard Museum and Arizona Opera, FOUND:RE Phoenix is a brand-new 105-room boutique art hotel with spaces, amenities, designs and details inspired by contemporary art, fashion, culture and music — it’s like staying in an ever-changing art gallery. At nearly twice the size of most other rooms, book the balcony king suite with separate sleep and living spaces.

Wine and Dine in Adelaide and Barossa Valley, Australia

Why Go: Sure, it’s a bit of a hike to get halfway around the globe, but if time allows, travelling to Adelaide delivers big on being both memorable and delectable. Along with its scenic coastline, and Port Adelaide’s colonial buildings, South Australia’s state capital is also a most gracious cosmopolitan city with a burgeoning food scene plus noteworthy events such as the Adelaide Fringe and WOMADelaide arts and music fests in February and March.

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Exceptional To-Do’s: There is plenty to do and see in Adelaide, but its close proximity to Barossa Valley, one of Australia’s most important wine regions, means a visit, and perhaps a stay, is a must. The Louise is a luxury vineyard boutique property providing the ultimate in country getaways, while Appellation, its award-winning hotel dining room, is a food lovers’ destination unto itself, with a menu that features upwards of 85% regional ingredients, including produce and herbs harvested from the hotel garden. Exclusive excursions and bespoke experiences abound, including wine tours and tastings, and a distinctly unique-to-the-region “Breakfast with the Kangaroos” set in a nearby conservation park.

Where to Eat: Epicureans will want to plan ahead to reserve a coveted seat at Restaurant Orana in Adelaide’s city centre. The kitchen is headed by one of the U.S.’s most renowned chefs, Jock Zonfrillo, whose passion for indigenous wild and foraged ingredients is evident throughout rotating seasonal tasting menus, including such regionally-inspired dishes as wattleseed and kangaroo risotto with wild grasses.

Where to Stay: With a rich history dating back to the mid-1800s, Adelaide’s first fire station is now a quirky-yet-refined boutique inn. Splendidly converted into three unique and individually themed suites, Fire Station Inn includes both the brilliant, family-friendly Fire Engine Spa Suite complete with fire pole and a 1942 fire truck parked at the end of the bed, and the impeccably designed five-star Residency Penthouse Apartment with balconies, fireplace and gourmet kitchen.

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/the-definitive-winter-travel-destinations-list-top-10-spots-to-enjoy-with-or-without-snow/feed0specialfpGetty ImagesIan Robertson/PostmediaPostmediaRick Diamond/Getty ImagesGetty ImagesGeorge Frey/BloombergPostmediaPostmediaRoss D. Franklin/AP PhotoGetty ImagesHow one businessman shows off what’s possible in Canada to his new refugee recruits from Syriahttp://business.financialpost.com/executive/leadership/how-one-businessman-shows-off-whats-possible-in-canada-to-his-new-refugee-recruits-from-syria
http://business.financialpost.com/executive/leadership/how-one-businessman-shows-off-whats-possible-in-canada-to-his-new-refugee-recruits-from-syria#respondFri, 04 Nov 2016 16:27:44 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=700422]]>There are two sides to Mohamad Fakih, a compact, effervescent Lebanon native who moved to Canada in 1999 by way of Italy. On the one hand, the 45-year-old married father of three sons has never forgotten his humble roots, and he has vowed to hire 100 Syrian refugees to work in his fast-growing chain of restaurants, Paramount Fine Foods. On the other hand, Fakih, who wears his hair slicked back and has a grin as wide as the Middle East, loves to flash the ample fruits of his hard work.

In Fakih’s corner office in suburban Toronto, between the floor-length window and his desk, he has parked an outlandish custom motorcycle. The chopper boasts a Baker motor and hot and cold taps from an 1893 Russian home; the clutch and gear pedals are matching silhouettes cut in stainless steel of a sultry babe in a bathing beauty pose; and an artist has carved the words Money $hot on the leather saddle. “I can never do anything at a small scale,” he says.

On his wrist is a Rolex Sky-Dweller Oyster Perpetual. Sky-dweller he is, caught somewhere between his native Lebanon and his adopted home in Mississauga, Ont., immediately west of Toronto: on Sept. 23 at 10:45 a.m., the watch indicated 3:45 p.m. as the time of day; a holdover, Fakih explained, from a recent trip to England (where he plans to open 20 restaurants).

Before Paramount, Fakih, like many immigrants, had stints at Coffee Time and Tim Hortons, but the trained gemologist’s first big foray into business in Canada came when he was working at a jeweller in Toronto and convinced Swatch to let him open 14 mall boutiques. He was operating three La Swiss locations when his wife sent him for a kilo of baklava from a Middle Eastern bakery in Mississauga. The bakery owner had read a splashy profile of Fakih’s house in a real estate magazine and asked to borrow $250,000. “Four days later he calls me and says, ‘The money is gone,’” he recalls.

Paramount’s expansion

Fakih, who speaks in hyperbole, said the owner had no idea how to run a business: “He has a problem with his car, he is taking it to a dentist.” Fakih set about to turn the restaurant around. The resulting chain now boasts a corporate staff of 135, and another 765 work at its franchises. The longest-standing employee is Rosanna Skinner, manager of corporate services, who started with Fakih at La Swiss in 2003. “He was always ambitious,” she says. Paramount now boasts more than 30 locations and plans to open 52 by year-end.

Fakih’s backhanded plunge into the world of hummus, tabouleh and pita has him riding high. To travel from his head office to a Paramount restaurant, Fakih glides in his Lamborghini Avendator, a two-seater whose doors open upwards like the wings of a lustrous heron. Unfortunately, the speed limit is 50 km/h so the car’s power is sadly underused.

Fakih’s showboat lifestyle is certainly at odds with those of the Syrian refugees he has welcomed, but his desire to help is sincere. Last year with Islamic Relief, Fakih visited a Syrian refugee camp in Lebanon and it clearly affected him. “I saw a child the age of my son, in a ripped t-shirt, sleeping next to a fire to try to keep warm,” he says. On his return to Canada, he pledged to hire 100 Syrian refugees.

They have been living in a zoo; if you don’t have a gun, you can’t eat. How can we help them stand tall and proud?

Given Canada’s chronic shortage of low-wage workers and Syrians’ familiarity with falafel and lamb skewers, it could also seem a self-interested move. But Fakih says the Syrians are not easy to integrate. “You need to manage expectations,” he says. “We are pulling them from the streets. We definitely need to get them used to women’s rights. They have been living in a zoo; if you don’t have a gun, you can’t eat. How can we help them stand tall and proud? We have two options: we can give them money from taxes or we can make them taxpayers.”

Fakih has chosen to make them taxpayers. In the kitchen at the Paramount in Erin Mills Town Centre, a Syrian refugee, Ehssan Harba, is peeling plastic wrappers from a case of akawie, a soft unripened cheese. Harba came into the restaurant in July after he heard of the offer to hire Syrians. He is 28 but war has aged him. He looks thin, haunted and a decade older. “I left Homs in 2013 because of the war,” he says. He smiles; he is grateful for the work. Now, two of his brothers and a sister work here, too.

Another refugee here is Ibrahim Ahmashar, 21. “My mother is in Aleppo and cannot leave,” he says. Today, he works part time and attends school. “I didn’t finish high school because of the war.”

The hiring pledge has earned Fakih plenty of goodwill. Customers stop to welcome him and hug him. Staff push tables together to seat 20 Syrian women wearing colourful headscarves for an early lunch. Says Emmy, enjoying her meal while her children are in school, “The food is very much like back home.”

]]>http://business.financialpost.com/executive/leadership/how-one-businessman-shows-off-whats-possible-in-canada-to-his-new-refugee-recruits-from-syria/feed0scene2Peter KuitenbrouwerUnplug and play: New iPhone pushes wireless headphones, but don’t let that compromise sound qualityhttp://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/unplug-and-play-new-iphone-pushes-wireless-headphones-but-dont-let-that-compromise-sound-quality
http://business.financialpost.com/financial-post-magazine/unplug-and-play-new-iphone-pushes-wireless-headphones-but-dont-let-that-compromise-sound-quality#respondTue, 01 Nov 2016 17:46:14 +0000http://business.financialpost.com/?p=696172]]>Cables are annoying, especially those attached to your headphones that have a particular knack for ending up in granny knots no matter how carefully you put them away. But perhaps a wireless utopia is within reach after Apple Inc. unveiled its iPhone 7 in September since it strongly encourages consumers to cut the cord whether they want to or not. Whether you picked up one of the iPhone 7 models or a competitor’s brand, there are some great options for wireless headphones that work with any modern tech gadget (phones, tablets and even computers).

Apple’s in-ear AirPods ($220) were also introduced in September. The company is using Bluetooth 4.0 technology, so it will work with most other phones, but part of what you’re paying for is the convenience of Apple integration. Apple devices will quickly recognize AirPods when you open their charging case and you are able to seamlessly hop around from device to device since it is synced to your iCloud account. Each earpiece has its own W1 processor, dual microphone and optical sensor to tell whether they are in your ear or not (when you take one out, audio is paused). You can double-tap to call up Siri, too. Strip away all the iOS integration though, and you’re left with just a merely decent pair of headphones that has pretty solid battery life for an in-ear set (about four to five hours, but the charging case gets around 20).

If money is no object, try Bose Corp.’s QuietComfort 35 over-the-ear wireless headphones ($450). Bose is doing its Bose thing once again by putting fantastic sound in such small speakers. Using Bluetooth 4.1, the QuietComfort 35 can also be connected to most devices and it even has a little microphone and remote that will work with certain Apple devices. The headphones are battery-powered for its noise cancellation technology, which works very well, and claims up to 20 hours of battery life (or 40 hours if you choose to use a headphone cable, but that’s clearly passé). There is an app to download, too, that will let you customize the QuietComfort 35’s equalizer or manage your paired devices (you can have two paired at the same time for easy switching). Bose’s QuietComfort 35 is heavier, bulkier and more expensive, but you get what you pay for in sound and you won’t miss your headphone cable.

Apple-owned Beats Electronics LLC also has a new line of wireless headphones that offers a few options in terms of pricing and quality. BeatsX ($180) is another in-ear option powered by Apple’s W1 chip, but it has a cable that goes around your neck to help you not lose them. Powerbeats3 ($250) are powered by the W1 processor, but are better designed for workouts thanks to plastic ear holsters. Finally, Beats Solo3 ($330) are over-the-ear headphones with up to 40 hours of battery life and Siri integration, but they don’t have the same audio quality Bose offers.

There are plenty of decent headphone options out there so cut the cable, free your phone and join the wireless revolution. Just expect to drop a lot of cash to do it properly.